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Ed wonders: <<Does anyone have any insight into why there is so little info
on how to write white papers... (A google search on 'white papers' returns
2.3 million hits ... a search on Brittney Spears only produces 1.1 million
)>>
Only 2.3 million? It's been a while since I was in grad school. Have they
changed the definition of "so little info" again to account for inflation?
<G>
<< I have perused dozens of recent tech writing text books and only one even
mentioned white papers (in a tabel listing document types) and a text on
tech writing for marketing only mentions them twice (without defining the
term or discussing them at length). So...why the silence? White papers
are neither that hard to define nor and they so easy as to be safely
ignored.>>
I think the problem with white papers is that if you ask three people to
define what one is, you'll get at least five answers. And that, quite
likely, is the problem: since there are so many different definitions, it's
not easily possible to write up a single chapter to describe the whole
thing. In fact, this sounds like a clarion call for someone out there in
techwr-l land to write such a book--though if you take on that challenge, do
your research first in other fields: I'd bet you can find something good
under "position papers" or "political writing" or even "grant applications".
On the whole, I'd guess that the reason you won't find white papers in most
technical communication books is twofold: First, they're more commonly seen
as marketing writing. (And technical marketing has, until recently, been
such a small part of the overall marketing profession that the white papers
we're most familiar with probably have an entirely different name in that
field.) Second, given the variety of possible meanings for the term, I
suspect that most tech.comm. texts discuss them under different titles
(e.g., marketing, position papers, situation-specific writing).
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."--Goethe
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