Re: Yahoo has no staff tech writers

[Kevin McLauchlan <kmclauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com>]

On Thursday 10 October 2002 16:46, John Posada wrote:
About the magically clear writer who happens to mangle 
grammar...
> Let's say that writer I referred to does everything in
> passive, or maybe he mixes second and third person. Maybe
> he stinks at parallel structure...whatever
>
> Maybe the run-of-the-mill writer couldn't pull it off and
> the steps would be muddled. OTOH, couldn't the detail,
> reasoning, and helpfulness (talk about grammar :-)) of
> the steps be clear and yet the grammar be substandard?

Passive voice is not a grammar problem. It's a stylistic 
preference with some persuasive argument behind it.

Second and third person mixing might be mostly just 
annoying, but give the monkey on the typewriter enough 
time, and s/he *will* produce some sentences that 
cause the reader to balk.

The parallel structure thing IS a clarity issue. Often 
you can understand what the writer meant... even 
though you are brought up short by the way it is 
written... but I've encountered plenty of sentences 
where the writer, and *some* readers, knew 
exactly what the writer meant, but other readers 
derived a different meaning, to their chagrin.

I find that parallelism (failure of) is one of the
grammatical problems that prove most resistant to
correction, in adults.  If it's entrenched, it'll take very
big earth-moving equipment to dig it out.  The 
problem is all those instances when clarity is not 
too badly compromised, and ambiguity is not such 
a big deal.  When the serious failures pop up, 
the writer just doesn't "get it", even when it's 
explained.

/kevin

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