Words vs Pictures
Oct. 14th, 2009 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mythtellerSo I'm working on a document that was written by some technical guys in France. That's right: French engineers tried to write a User Guide in English and it's been given to me to edit and rewrite by the end of this month.
Did I mention I'm only working two days a week nowadays? That means I have 5 days left to work on this project (unless they give me more billable hours).
I'm going through this document and it's very badly done. Aside from the grammar and spelling mistakes, they seem to think that explaining a task involves taking a screen grab of the application, pasting it in Word, and writing "You use this screen to do ABC." They're leaving it to you to figure out exactly how to use the screen to perform said ABC task.
After all, if you're not smart enough to figure out how to perform the task on your own, you shouldn't be using this application (this was said to me once by a project manager who was complaining that the tech docs were too long).
Consequently, every section of this Word document has 50 words of text and three screengrabs each, but no real procedures written out. Which means I'll have to somehow divine the procedures myself and write them out.
I showed this to my boss, pointing out all the cryptic screen grabs that do nothing in the way of actually explaining how to perform the tasks that the application was designed to do. He grinned and chortled "You know what they say: a picture is worth a thousand words!"
If you're ever thinking about going into technical writing, just remember that no one will care about writing excellent documentation as much as you do. The sooner you realize this, the happier (or at least less frustrated) you'll be.
Did I mention I'm only working two days a week nowadays? That means I have 5 days left to work on this project (unless they give me more billable hours).
I'm going through this document and it's very badly done. Aside from the grammar and spelling mistakes, they seem to think that explaining a task involves taking a screen grab of the application, pasting it in Word, and writing "You use this screen to do ABC." They're leaving it to you to figure out exactly how to use the screen to perform said ABC task.
After all, if you're not smart enough to figure out how to perform the task on your own, you shouldn't be using this application (this was said to me once by a project manager who was complaining that the tech docs were too long).
Consequently, every section of this Word document has 50 words of text and three screengrabs each, but no real procedures written out. Which means I'll have to somehow divine the procedures myself and write them out.
I showed this to my boss, pointing out all the cryptic screen grabs that do nothing in the way of actually explaining how to perform the tasks that the application was designed to do. He grinned and chortled "You know what they say: a picture is worth a thousand words!"
"That's great," I replied. "When you take a picture of a sunset, every person who looks at it can come up with their own 1000 words and all of those words will be right. In technical writing, you need to make sure that every reader who looks at a picture comes up with the same 1000 words."
Which means I'll need to retake every screen grab and make sure it is relevant to the procedures I will have to rewrite anyways. Oy.If you're ever thinking about going into technical writing, just remember that no one will care about writing excellent documentation as much as you do. The sooner you realize this, the happier (or at least less frustrated) you'll be.
