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Subject:Re: Drop term "user's guide"? From:John Wilcox <JWilcox -at- zetron -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 20 May 2004 10:04:22 -0700
Last year, under the initiative of a new tech comm manager, we did away with
User Guide, Product Manual, etc., altogether. I was initially resistant,
having used such terms religiously for the past 17 years (as, I perceive,
has been the case with most of you). But I've really come to like the new
naming convention.
Typically, we have a suite of manuals, and they were named thusly:
Productname Hardware Installation and Configuration Manual
Productname Software Installation and Configuration Manual
Productname Operator's Guide
Now we have:
Productname Hardware Installation and Configuration
Productname Software Installation and Configuration
Productname Operation
And for a single-manual product, we have simply:
Productname
There has been no impact other than fewer words to type and less space taken
up by the title (both on covers and everywhere else it's mentioned).
Cross-references have the same look and work just fine, there have been no
instances of confusion, and no customers have complained (or praised us,
either, for that matter).
Looking at my bookshelf, I see the user's guide for RoboHelp Office 9.2.
It's titled simply "RoboHelp Office" and it was published three years ago,
so this concept is not new.
Gracefully surrender the things of youth: hyphens, capitalization, user's
guide, ... :)
_____________________________
Regards,
John Wilcox, Technical Writer
Zetron, Redmond
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