Re: LONG - A colloquial writing style?

[John Cook <john -dot- cook -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On 5/10/05, Steven Brown <stevenabrown -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm curious to hear if anyone's writing technical
> documentation using a less formal, more colloquial
> style. (Notice I did not say grammatically incorrect!)
> 
> For example, we TWs typically write:
> 
> Note: Do not press the Panic button unless you are
> encountering an actual emergency.
> 
> Are any of you writing more like this:
> 
> Pressing the Panic button will draw the attention of
> emergency responders and your company's CEO, so you
> might want to think twice before doing that.

Scot Hacker wrote the authoritative work on the BeOS, _The BeOS
Bible_, using just such a style, and it was an instant classic.  Not
only a compusively readable work, it took potentially dry data and
infused the same sense of hip, engaged style that surrounded the OS
itself.

Granted, this was a for-print, for-sale tome, and not the sort of
in-house documentation that many of us do, but it seemed to capture
the perfect tone for that application, and I keep it on my shelf at
work as inspiration for how technical writing can be accurate and
lively in the right situation.

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