Usability through Fun

[David Castro]

On 7/21/06, Geoff Lane <geoff at gjctech.co.uk> wrote:
> > We say over and over that our writing should not use humor as it can
> > be misinterpreted and takes the chance of being offensive to those
> > who might not see the humor.
>
> Provided you know your audience, I mean *really* know your audience,
> why not?

I agree about the *really* knowing your audience part. My absolute
favorite tech publisher, Manning (http://www.manning.com) has the
following as a footnote in their book, Ant in Action:

"Ant is not at all ashamed to be bi-slashual, and is actually quite
proud of it!"

This is quite likely to offend at least a significant subset of the
readership of this manual, for its play on words. Manning doesn't
usually use a lot of humor in their books. Not like for Dummies books
do, anyway. So I was surprised that this made it through their
editors.

Be careful, whirlers!

--
-David Castro
 thejavaguy at gmail.com