RE: This too is technical communication

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Stuart Burnfield wrote: 
 
> If you're pretending to be a clueless idiot, it's hard to 
> avoid overwriting and overexplaining. You'll be tailoring the 
> docs to make them more usable by a handful of users, at the 
> expense of the overwhelming majority of users. (I'm assuming 
> you haven't identified clueless idiots as a significant 
> segment of your target audience :^)

Hear, hear. Mark Baker, who I believe was a regular contributer to this
list (or was it FrameUsers?) a while back, posited "Baker's Paradox,"
which I formatted nicely with a border and big letters, and posted
prominently in my cube as a reminder:

"Any procedure that anticipates every possible misunderstanding will be
incomprehensible to all users."

Richard


------
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------







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