Finding errors in manuals? (take II)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Dori Green notes: <<Here's the trick I learned in college:  always  
include a few harmless errors so the professor doesn't dig deeper to  
discover that the entire foundation of the logic in your reasoning is  
fatally flawed.>>

It's rare when you're working without an editor or peer reviewer that  
it becomes necessary to consciously add errors; there are usually  
plenty of them without such intent. Simply part of the nature of the  
game of writing... and I say this as someone with more than 300  
published articles in print.

You'll often see this trick recommended as a way of ensuring that  
reviewers are actually paying attention, but in general, it's a bad  
idea. (Sorry to be so blunt!) The problem is that most of us are way  
too busy at work, and particularly under deadline pressure and when  
you're operating on 4 hours' sleep, removing the inserted errors  
becomes yet another detail that's easy to miss. Thus, in the editing  
community, there are countless anecdotes about errors that made it  
into print (nowadays, onto the customer's hard disk) as a result.

That's not to say that you should never do this; it can be a useful  
way to convince a manager that the SMEs are not performing adequate  
reviews, and that the company may find itself in serious legal  
jeopardy as a result. But if you do this, you must ensure that  
removing the errors is a major priority, not just "yet another detail".


----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
--------------------------------------------------
Coming soon:  _Effective onscreen editing_ (http://www.geoff-hart.com/ 
home/onscreen-book.htm)

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