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How about in the early days of floppy disks when a several step
installation procedure was written on the diskette label (and
therefore inaccessible when the disk was in the drive)?
-----Original Message-----
From: Nancy Allison [mailto:maker -at- verizon -dot- net]
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 2:31 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Most illogical documentation
This seems a Friday-ish topic for tech writers.
What is the most illogical bit of tech writing you've seen?
The earliest, and still one of the best, that I've come across
was a passage about how to open the box. You could only have
opened the manual if you had opened the packing box beforehand.
(Manuals were not handed out like candy by the sales people,
either -- too expensive. So really, honestly, if you were reading
that page, you'd already opened the box.)
It even had a picture of the flaps of the box being opened and an
arrow showing that the stuff had to come UP out of the TOP of the
box, which is where the flaps were OPEN.
Naturally, I personally have never written anything quite that
illogical, not even under duress! I swear!
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