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Subject:Re: injecting a little whimsy into grey text From:"Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- users -dot- com> To:"techwr-l List" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 7 Oct 2008 09:33:25 -0500
From: Janice Gelb <Janice -dot- Gelb -at- Sun -dot- COM>
Subject: Re: injecting a little whimsy into grey text
Humor in technical writing is a tricky subject.
That said, I have seen small touches done well.
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I have occasionally indulged in some very subtle touches of humor,
buried deeply in the text, but usually buried so deeply that no one
noticed.
Since our software involves setting up accounts for people, which in
turn involves names and addresses, I have occasionally used names from
the cult classic TV series DARK SHADOWS. No, I never used Barnabas
Collins, but I did use some of the more normal sounding names like Chris
Jennings.
On a more personal level, sometimes I'll use addresses of places I've
gone or first names of waitresses and such that I've known, along with a
last name that's meant to describe them. For example, in the case of a
diminutive person, I would use their first name and give them the last
name "Small."
Another thing I did was write statements that were meant to have some
kind of humored subtext, and on one occasion, a reviewer actually picked
up on one of them. I discovered that it was possible to authorize
someone to access the specific function I was describing without
authorizing them for the SET of functions to which it belonged. What I
wrote was something like, "If you can't access the is function, even
though you know you were authorized for it, it's possible you were given
authorization for the function without being given authorization for the
group of functions is belongs to." The reviewer later said to me
something like, "Yeah I saw that line about how some idiot might have
authorized you for the function without authorizing you for the group of
functions," which was exactly what I was thinking.
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