Re: terminology question (and a bit of a rant)

[kcronin -at- daleen -dot- com]

If the actual CONTENT of the manual is correct, you are spinning your
wheels, and run the risk of annoying your boss.

But if you really want to go out on that limb, go out and BUY yourself a
Microsoft style guide (as opposed to requesting one), learn how The Big
Boys do it, and then use The Power Of Bill to back up your arguments.
Unless it conflicts with how YOU want the styles to be, in which case
you're back at square one.

But I gotta ask: If you're the only person writing online help, isn't this
all a waste of time? You already know how you want to do things. Do YOU
really need a style guide to tell you how you already write?

If you have the power to impose your styles on whoever is writing the
manual, then knock yourself out, and lay down the law to the other
writer(s). But only if it's REALLY the most important thing you should be
doing right now. Is it?

It does sound like there are some inefficiencies/redundancies in the way
your company produces documentation. But I hope you won't add to it by
forcing somebody else to reinvent their wheel to look nice next to your
wheel. (Hmmmmm, can I find any *other* way to use a wheel metaphor in this
post, or is two times enough?)<g>

Instead, perhaps you could provide more value to your company by
suggesting ways to eliminate redunancy of effort in producing
documentation. To me that would be way more valuable than making some poor
schlub worry about what to call a screen in a doc that's only going to be
used internally.

Pick your windmills with care!


Keith Cronin
____________________

Please respond ONLY if you agree with me. I am not interested in receiving
any actual advice, and merely want to establish that my opinion is the
only valid one to have under these circumstances. I need empathy and
validation, not solutions!


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