Technical writing antipatterns

by Juliette on August 11, 2008

I grabbed this screenshot from an amusingly unhelpful page of help documentation.

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

kristin nienhuis August 12, 2008 at 9:13 am: can’t decide if i am “glad” to see this page or if I could have happily “existed” without… :-)
Rhonda August 12, 2008 at 6:29 pm: Looks like someone was writing for an ex-boss of mine! His ‘metric’ for my ‘worth’ as a technical writer from one release to the next was how many more pages were in Release 4, compared to Release 3.

*My* metric for the same documentation was how many LESS pages there were. Fewer pages meant any or all of these:
* tighter writing and editing
* removal of topics no-one cared about or wanted, or that were repetitive of other topics (e.g. an ‘add widget’ and an ‘edit widget’ topic were often very similar and could be combined)
* more usable software that didn’t require a 400 page manual to use it!

BTW, I no longer work for that company—and nor does he!

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