Re: a simple question

[Chuck Martin <cmartin -at- SEEKERSOFT -dot- COM>]

What you might want to communicate to yourbroker is that the work may
expand beyond the scope fo the original contract and explain why.

You might want to rewrite some pieces of the text for clarity and
consistency, then approach your manager at the client, explain what you
found, and show the differences. If the managere sees that yuor writing
makes some major improvements, you have left the issue where it belongs,
with management. If you want to do the clean up/rewriting work, you can say
this, being clear about the time and cost. The client can decide what it
wants.

Unfortunately, the client may decide that it does not want to spend the
extra money to improve the quality of its documentation. Then you're kinda
stuck. No metter how persuasive you can be about the cost-effectiveness of
quality documentation, if they don't want to spend the up-front money,
there's nothing you can do about it.

At 02:28 PM 9/11/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>I'd like to begin this e-mail by thanking each of you for many helpful and
>insightful posts to this list.  I've been in lurk mode for the past year
>and have gained much from "keeping my mouth shut" and "listening" to the
>experts.
>
>Well, I am now de-lurking because I have a small problem and I'm not sure
>how to deal with it.
>
>The situation:  I'm currently working on a short-term contract basis
>converting a tutorial, manual, and various other documentation to on-line
>for a small start-up company.  There is one other Tech Writer working here
>as well.
>
>So far I have converted only the 24 page tutorial.  The reason: There were
>so many punctuation, spelling, and formatting errors left by the other
>Tech Writer that I had to do a major clean-up job as I converted.  And
>yes, I was given the final draft. (I can't wait to see the 150 page manual
>- yea.)
>
>I mentioned to the client that there were some small problems in the
>tutorial and I'd be happy to go into the original and clean them up.
>Well, that's what I'm doing right now.  The problem is, that as I'm
>cleaning up the punctuation, spelling and formatting errors I'm also
>finding some pretty amazing grammatical errors.
>
>For example:
>
>"Republishing opens the publish screen and you need to tell
>it to find the new keyword you just assigned, so press
>the Update Keys button.  Then you will see your new
>keyword(s) listed in the keywords field of the publish
>screen, and then press Publish."
>
>This paragraph is part of a bulleted list and, thus, a step in a certain
>procedure.
>
>Does anyone else see something wrong with that paragraph or am I just
>being picky?
>
>If I'm not "just being picky" what would you all recommend I do about it?
>Do I tell the client?  Do I tell the agent who placed us both here?  Or do
>I just keep my mouth shut and not worry about it because it's not my
>problem....although essentially it is.
>
>Suggestions? Comments? Expert Advice?
>
>Thank you in advance.
>
>Randi Figueredo
>randi -at- nwlink -dot- com
>
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--
"You don't look American"
"Everyone looks American, because Americans are from everywhere"
                                            - Doonesbury
Chuck Martin
Technical Writer, Seeker Software, Inc      | Personal
cmartin -at- seekersoft -dot- com                      | writer -at- grin -dot- net
www.seekersoft.com                          | www.grin.net/~writer

 TECHWR-L (Technical Communication) List Information: To send a message
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  Search the archives at http://www.documentation.com/  or search and
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