Re: Basic rules of technical writing

Subject: Re: Basic rules of technical writing
From: Joseph J Little <litt0023 -at- MAROON -dot- TC -dot- UMN -dot- EDU>
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 1994 18:20:22 GMT

In article <3dct6o$1ln -at- newsbf02 -dot- news -dot- aol -dot- com>, CJBenz <cjbenz -at- aol -dot- com> wrote:


>BTW, after reading a few comments, I've revised my rules to wit:
>1. Make it understandable.
>2. Make it consistent, unless that interferes with Rule 1.
>3. Make it grammatically correct, unless that interferes with Rule 1 or 2.
>4. Make it technically correct. If that interferes with Rule 1, 2, or 3,
> you better have a darn good reason.

>I think this covers everything now. (Go ahead! Prove me wrong!)

First of all, I want to thank Chris for initiating this
discussion; it's a great thread! However, by appending "if...you
better have a darn good reason" to #4, we haven't solved anything.
Now all we'll argue about is what constitutes a darn good reason.

So, let's look at what constitutes "technically correct." I
don't like Chris's priority system--I believe #4 should be
repositioned above #1 and have an exclamation point after it.
However, everyone probably has a different notion of what
"technically correct" means to them. For me, I have no problems
truncating the number pi to 3.1415--most applications I've found
do not warrant further decimal positions. However, I'm sure
someone might argue that pi should be carried out possibly
to 3.14159265358 before they would consider it technically
correct.

So, I guess my point is, that Chris, could you expand on what
you mean by technically correct? Certainly, technical
correctness isn't an absolute which everyone agree upon.

Joe


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