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Subject:Langauge and humor From:Michael Andrew Uhl <uhl -at- VISLAB -dot- EPA -dot- GOV> Date:Thu, 9 Jan 1997 15:41:12 -0800
Fellow Technical Communicators,
I once subscribed to a humor listserver. The Europeans
are endlessly making fun of each other's language. As
I recall, Flemish was a favorite target of the French.
Americans have always made fun of other peoples',
including other American's, dialects and accents. I
am a Yankee in North Carolina, I know about these
things. I'm the one with the accent! I am not personally
offended if someone tells me I "talk funny."
Humor almost always offends someone. We just have to
ignore it, rebutt it, or *maybe even laugh*. Too many
tech writers don't know how to laugh.
Putting jokes in documentation is a risky trick in that
it might accidentally make it into print. On the other
hand, it *can*, in the right circumstances, work
beautifully.
...struggling to make people around me smile and laugh,
Mike
--
Michael Andrew Uhl, Lead Technical Writer (uhl -at- vislab -dot- epa -dot- gov)
Lockheed Martin, Primary Support Contractor to US EPA
U.S. EPA Scientific Visualization Center
National Environmental Supercomputing Center (NESC)
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
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