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Subject:Re: Gore orders "plain language" From:"Hutchings, Christa" <cwhutchings -at- HOMEWIRELESS -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 5 Jun 1998 16:49:01 -0400
At my previous employer, the prez of our division issued a mandate to
Tech Comm that we would cut all docs by 50%. We were trying to decide
whether to eliminate the illustrations, eliminate the Safety section
(and risk provoking our Legal beagles), eliminate the Installation
section, eliminate the Operation section, or eliminate the Maintenance
section when I wised up and left the company. Don't know what my poor
former colleagues finally decided to do... :-)
Chris Welch-Hutchings
Sr. Technical Writer
Home Wireless Networks, Inc. mailto:cwhutchings -at- homewireless -dot- com
-----Original Message-----
From: Tracy Boyington [mailto:tracy_boyington -at- OKVOTECH -dot- ORG]
Sent: Friday, June 05, 1998 4:43 PM
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: Re: Gore orders "plain language"
> I can just picture someone coming in and interpreting the "72 words
will
> be reduced to six" as a mandate to cut all documentation by 92%.
This is what I'm worried about. Nobody's against plain language, it's
just the idea that plain language can be quantified as a 92% reduction
in length. The perils of Tina the brittle tech writer come to mind. :-)
