How many levels of indents and heads are reasonable?

[Ned Bedinger]

Raj Machhan wrote:
> Agreed. The technical document has to be correct in all aspects. But isn't
> it understood? Can this ever be a debatable point? Wasn't this the first
> thing that is told to each and every writer.

No, the usual first (and last, and in between) thing is always stylistic.

If one needs to talk about being
> correct in a forum like ours, I guess we are undermining the intellectual
> ability of the members.

Honestly, I'd have to say it depends. In some cases, I'm sure it is 
taken for granted and that's why we don't discuss it.

Unfortunately, the worst tech writing problems I've ever seen are the 
ones that come from technical writers who are not able to get projects 
right. Sometimes it is due to schedules, sometimes due to bad matches 
between project and writer, and SOMETIMES it is due to tech writers who 
put form over function, skipping rightness in order to pursue 
refinements of grammar and punctuation, style guides, tools, and the 
making of pretty readable documents. I say that's all well and good for 
tech writing (we operate in a cloud of skills and expertise), but it is 
only half of the enchilda--we also need the rightness part.

Debating the goodness of this problem is a fool's errand, but discussion 
of it isn't so bad, is it?

Ned Bedinger
doc at edwordsmith.com