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Region 7 Conference
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About 10 Things I Wish I’d Said During My Presentations at the Region 7 Conferenceby Larry Prado I gave two presentations at the Region 7 conference (I can’t say no to just one helping of punishment). On the way home, I thought of hundreds of things I wished I’d had the time or the presence of mind to say. Now that I’ve decided to write them down, I’ll write about only a few of them.Are we really ready for an online world? My points for this presentation were to show that there are a number of things which, to me, indicate we’re not 100 percent ready for an online world and that we, as technical communicators, are in a unique position to make it a better online world. As writers, our brains work in a very special way: we grasp big concepts, then imagine a series of symbols (words) to convey these concepts to others. If we are really good writers, we can also see when words are weak. Sometimes we see that our words and organization of the material are going to be insufficient to convey the ideas and concepts of the subject we’re writing about. That’s when we call in the troops—the simple, yet well-designed graphic—that explains everything and gives our readers the understanding they’ve been struggling to grasp all along. If we’re super writers, we can see when documentation should, or should not, be online. Horseless carriages, buggy whips, and Web pages For over a thousand years people used horses and some type of carriage to carry them from point A to point B. Getting the horses to move in a controlled manner required reins and a motivating factor (the whip). The first horseless carriages (automobiles) came equipped with buggy whips. This newfangled device, with an engine and a steering wheel, simply would not respond to the crack of the whip. But somehow this insight escaped the automobile designers who included them with the product. Eventually, they saw the obsolescence of the buggy whip and no longer shipped them with the product. Strange as it may seem (or not so strange, depending on how well you know me), my mind instantly compared and contrasted the buggy whip to the Web page. The actual layout of a Web page is a portrait 8-1/2 x 11 “page,” only half of which is shown at one time. If Web pages really are supposed to be online, and an online screen is a landscape format, then isn’t the lower half of the Web page really like a buggy whip in an automobile? Try as we might, we still haven't shed the concept of paper. The current portrait format practically begs us to print it, perhaps like a buggy whip begs us to hitch a horse to the front of an automobile. The read-me files The first read-me files I ever read were a couple of pages in 12 pt. Courier without formatting, hypertext links, and (bless their engineering hearts) written with lots of jargon and little style. The purpose of these documents was to get those last-minute “important” bits of useful information to the user while the manuals were at the bindery. Or the help files had already been rewritten and recompiled for the umpteenth time. And NO ONE was about to approach the overworked writer who had a six-pack and a deer rifle in his office. Let me be clear: I have found some good stuff in these types of “online documents.” But one day, it must have occurred to someone, “let’s save money and paper (more on the paper part in a minute) and just ship all of the user information as a read me file” (12 pt. Courier, no hypertext links, etc.). There is one company in particular that ships only this type of documentation. I won’t mention any names, but this company makes these blue plastic electronic storage devices and these oversized diskettes that can hold about 100 MB of “stuff” … Being the good user I am, I printed out all 45 pages of the “online documentation” but I ran out of paper at page 36. While I was on my way to buy more, it occurred to me that had I been able to print this thing double-sided, I wouldn’t be making this trip. Or, if it had been a real online document (a useful help file, an online-formatted reference document with graphics, formatting and links), I wouldn’t have even thought about using nearly 10 percent of a ream of paper just to be an informed and competent user. Then it hit me: the well-intentioned read-me file has turned into a “here, YOU print it” file. Suppose you went to a client, wrote some documentation for them, and said “Here’s your finished product; it’s to be printed single-sided on 8-1/2 x 11 sheets with no binding.” Do you suppose any marginally concerned client would support your waste of their paper AND money? Don't you think the client might ask for double-sided printing? Or double-sided printing on 5-1/2 x 8-1/2? With a decent cover? The sum total of such read-me files is greater, not less, paper waste. Most companies demand the cost savings associated with double-sided printing or using smaller paper. Let’s not lose this wisdom and foresight. Single-source documentation I have a nice program that allows me to modify graphic images—Paint Shop Pro. I like this program. It’s been called the poor man’s PhotoShop. When I first worked with PaintShop, I wasn’t sure what one of the tools did, so I opened the help file. In it, I didn’t find the help I was seeking. “Ah, let’s look in the book that came with it,” I said, pleased that I had a manual to read, a place to pause, to search, possibly to find some other kernel of information, to fill my mind with the possibilities while looking at a nice graphic (which I wouldn’t find in the help file). When I got to the section where I believed I would find the information, I thought “hmm, this looks familiar. Didn’t I see this same description in the help file?” Undeterred, I turned to the book’s index and searched for the key topic and related ones. Nothing here, so maybe I missed something in the help file. So I went to the computer. I wish I hadn’t. I can still feel my smirk when I realized the manual contained no more information than the help file. In fact, the manual was just a verbatim version of the help file. I had nowhere else to go except to the book store to buy a REAL manual for the program. The point is not about my disappointment but rather the fact that someone didn’t realize that single-source documentation is not about writing once and putting the same information in both places. Single-source documentation is about putting pertinent information in the place where the USER is most likely to look for it—not where the information developers think it should be. You can write everything in one place and separate the information into online-pertinent and paper-pertinent. To me, such a manual is an unfortunate waste of paper. In this situation, “how to use this or that tool”—procedural information—would have been most useful in the online help (where it was) and “what are the possibilities of using this tool” would have been most helpful in the printed manual (where it wasn’t). We are writers and users. We should be using our writing abilities and computer experience or the computer experience of others to make better judgments, thoughtful improvements, and wise decisions about online (or not online) documentation. Until we do, we’re part of the problem! About style guides The only thing I can recall wanting to say on this topic was that the price of our style guide (The Veridus Online Style Guide) is comparable to most desktop publishing applications. (My apologies to the gentleman who asked about the price.) Finally … Thanks to Mary Margaret Coates for pointing out that spell checkers don’t know the difference between “palates” and “palettes” (as in roof of the mouth or what artists use to mix their paints). Now, I do. Comments?
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