RE: techwr-l digest: July 06, 2004

["Marguerite Krupp" <mkrupp -at- cisco -dot- com>]

Brad (bconnatser -at- epri-peac -dot- com) asked yesterday: what is "the 
the prevailing definition of an operation/user manual by content. So, in
your experience, what are the "must haves" in such a manual? Can anyone
point to a definition of such a manual?"

The STC judging criteria for the Technical Publications and Online
Communications competitions should be useful in defining characteristics, if
not content, of an operation/user manual. Check out www.stc.org. You'll have
to putz around a bit, but they're there.

In general, I would look for something that told me what it is and how to
use it. For a piece of equipment, I would also want to know the salient
parts. And for anything that I'd be likely to refer to more than once and
that's longer than a few pages, I'd look for a TOC and Index.

Marguerite
(Who just got a new high-tech chair with the worst instruction manual I've
ever seen!)


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