Re: Lots of acronyms (Was: Nitpicky little style question)

Subject: Re: Lots of acronyms (Was: Nitpicky little style question)
From: Al Geist <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 11:24:40 -0500

Jonathan West wrote:

This is a point of curiosity to me. I have seen some technical documentation
that was absolutely awash with defined terms and acronyms - on an some pages
I would count 50 or even 100 such items.

Obviously, where the documentation is paper, not much can be done to help
the user understand the meaning of those terms except to provide an
excellent index and glossary. But for electronic documentation, in principle
every last occurrence of those defined terms and acronyms could be
hyperlinked back to where its meaning is defined, so the real meaning is no
more then a mouse click away.


A hundred definitions no a page is an indication that some serious editing needs to be done, or at least a conversation with the SMEs about terminology. Even in electronic documentation, that many links to definitions would probably loose the viewer, especially if they were popups.

Back when I wrote for the government, acronyms were the norm and there were a lot of people who through them around like kids spitting watermelon seeds. The problem was, there were so many acronyms and definitions that the content was lost. In one of the last proposals I developed for a government services company, I included a list of definitions in the front matter. In a website I developed for a company marketing advanced sound system technology, I had links to definitions. However, in neither case did the number of acronyms or defined terms exceed 10.

Al

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Lots of acronyms (Was: Nitpicky little style question): From: Jonathan West

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