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Subject:RE: reviewing <ptui> From:"Le Vie, DonaldX S" <donaldx -dot- s -dot- le -dot- vie -at- intel -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 8 Jan 2001 11:07:14 -0800
Here's my contribution...
"The editing function is neither trivial nor inconsequential. It is a
value-add service that we, as technical communications professionals,
provide for our customers so that we may do a better job of transferring
knowledge of our applications so customers can use them successfully in
their designs. To ensure that this knowledge transfer occurs in the proper
context in which it was intended, it is crucial to the effectiveness of this
and all documents that you as a subject matter expert review it completely
for technical accuracy, completeness, and reliability.
Make sure you copy the project manager on this too.
To illustrate the nontrival nature of editing, you might want to use this
example from one of my former clients:
Here comes that man eating shark.
Here comes that man-eating shark.
The same sentence but with the "trivial" insertion of a hyphen changes
completely the context of the second sentence.
I am editing bleeding-edge microprocessor documentation written by engineers
whose native language is not English. They write in an extremely convoluted
style (more so than engineers whose native language is English), omit all
articles, ignore punctuation, and misplace hyphens. They ignore the style
guide and style sheets I continually send them. Makes for a fun day.
Donn Le Vie
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