A Good Problem, but a Problem Nonetheless...

[neilson at windstream.net]

"Pro TechWriter" wrote
> On several occasions, I was told not to change anything, period, even
> though the documents were incredibilty inaccurate and would not be
> understandable by an average person. It's frustating.

In certain situations (a military contracting company comes to mind) the
document is *supposed* to contain all the errors and just look pretty. The
idea is to give the customer precisely what the contract specifies, and any
changes are part of a new contract. Spell that: $new $contract.

Furthermore, in the military situation, the tech writer possibly is excluded
from knowing the particular details, because of contract secrecy or perhaps
because "we do it the Army way" and there is no choice, either for the tech
writer or for his manager, of doing it any other way. Perhaps the old joke,
"I don't think they're going to read this thing, but will only check that it
weighs more than four pounds," is literally true.

--Peter Neilson