Re: Rant continued from previous page (was Re: Another Word guru question)

[Geoff Lane <geoff -at- gjctech -dot- co -dot- uk>]

Please excuse the rant, but this topic is related to an incident that
could have cost one of my readers his life. The data in question gave
torque settings that were a default value unless otherwise specified,
and torque for a critical fastener was on the second page.

On Saturday, February 10, 2007, Mike Starr wrote;

> Why on earth do we need to add "Continued..." to the top of each
> additional page?

We need to add "Continued" to the top of each additional page to show
that it's incomplete. For that, we need to add "continued/.." at the
bottom of a page that is continued, and "../continued" at the top of
the continuation page so that the recipient of either page knows he's
not seeing the whole picture.

> Do we think they're not going to turn the page and that the table
> having the same headings on both pages is not going to clue them in
> to the concept that there was too much stuff to fit on one page?

Unless no harm can come from a reader seeing only one of the pages, we
need to do it because the reader might not have access to both pages.
For example, if one page was printed from a PDF, or even a photocopy
of something only available to our audience in hardcopy. Now I've had
technical data for machinery misinterpreted from one of my manuals
because of this issue - and only by good fortune it wasn't fatal. Ever
since, I've used continuation markers unless the customer demands I
don't and is prepared to put that instruction in writing.

> And if our readers are such clueless bowbs are they really the
> target audience we want/need to serve? ... And no, I'm not picking
> on Nancy in particular but on the misguided portion of the technical
> writing community that seems to think this sort of thing is worth
> spending time trying to accomplish.

We often can't pick our audience and if our tech writers are such
arrogant and myopic bowbs to believe that such devices are never
necessary ...

... and FWIW, I do think that time spent arranging my documents to
avoid possibly fatal misinterpretation is time very well spent.

(rant over)

-- 
Geoff

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