Course Blog: TCOM 6165

Apologies to everyone else for the length. This is as short a refutation of Bruno’s idiocy as I could whip out during a lunch break. Please skip ahead if you’re not Bruno/Dog/Bunny/Idiot of the Week.

Let’s do a quick review of your grasp of science, Bruno:

Point One

You led off by announcing that Godel’s work proved that the opposite of a true statement will also inevitably be true, under some set of conditions somewhere, and that logic is inherently flawed. (You also misspelled Uncertainty Principle immediately after chastising John for a spelling error.)

This is, charitably, a misunderstanding; Godel says no such thing. The incompleteness theorem says only that a mathematical theory that’s consistent must be inherently incomplete, i.e., rest on some axiomatic assumptions… a statement which applies only to mathematical proofs, not all systems of knowledge. Applying set theory to human behavior has been tried before, and it’s as invalid now as it ever was. Score: Science one, Bruno’s interpretation zero.

Point Two

Then you got one right! You correctly noted that the attempt to apply Einstein’s relativity work to human behavior (instead of physical laws) is invalid and ineffective. This is correct, and it’s not limited to just Einstein. Score: Science two (since science says the same thing), Bruno’s interpretation one.

Point Three

You also correctly described Heisenberg’s principle as it applies to the position and velocity of electrons (half point), but spoiled it by immediately insisting that this has "profound implications" for all logical and physical processes. This is another misapplication. Score: Science three, Bruno’s interpretation 1-1/2.

Point Four

Next, you claimed that evolution was impossible ("Life can’t evolve from non-life, like those egotistical ‘scientists’ claim"), because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics—an argument so old and embarrassingly easy to refute that even creationists don’t bother trying it any more.

When your mistake was pointed out, you retreated into claiming that closed system and entropy don’t mean what every scientist says it means, and that therefore the Second Law is impossible anyway because of the First Law! All of this, as a path to declaring that science is incapable of describing "real-world" systems—which, in fact, is exactly what it does. So that’s what “argued yourself into a corner” looks like….

You wound up claiming that Einstein proved that the Sun goes around the Earth(!) in your quest to declare absolute relativity for all possible statements of fact. "Science proves that magic exists," you announced, apropos of nothing but the voices in your head.

Then you announced that the Sun isn’t losing energy at all! Umm, yes it is: in English, that effect is called "shining." Score: Science four, Bruno’s interpretation 1-1/2.

Point Five

Later on, you argued that accepting the findings of science somehow equates to a reductionist/mechanistic view of reality that inherently denies the existence of a god—again, a common philosophical error that has nothing to do with science itself, but only with the way people misunderstand and misapply it.

You insist that Science declares (arrogantly, of course) that there can be no meaning or purpose to existence—and again, science says no such thing. Further, no one here has made that argument, even once—but you’ve devoted a lot of energy to refuting the argument no one made. (The sure sign of a fanatic.)

Still in the realm of "idiot scientists," you insisted that degrees are useless, that evolutionary researchers and biologists are "crackpots," and that only one man—Dr. Robert Rosen—deserves the title of True Scientist. The silliness of this is self-evident. Score: Science five, Bruno’s interpretation 1-1/2.

Point Six

You then moved into an American Mathematical Society article on Godel’s theorems. (I always wondered why mathematicians were the most likely, of all branches of science, to embrace mysticism; maybe it’s the lack of real-world application in their work.)

Ironically, the very first page of that article cautions readers against the tendency to try to apply the incompleteness concept to contexts where it doesn’t work—a similar problem to what happens when zealots and axe-grinders get ahold of Einstein ("relativity"), Heisenberg ("uncertainty") , and quantum mechanics ("observer effect"). All such inappropriate applications are easily proven wrong and mainly expose the political/social agenda of the one attempting to cloak his opinions in science.

Franzen does not "admit defeat" at the end of his article; rather, he clearly substantiates the points that

1. internal consistency of a theorem is no guarantee of accuracy in and of itself;

2. incompleteness (in the Godel sense) is limited in application; and

3. that incompleteness in the pop-culture sense amounts to simply declaring that NOTHING can be proven and NOTHING can be known. Again, that’s not science; it’s philosophy, and Godel’s work doesn’t support that application.

Franzen even specifically states that "Even the most determined 'wet blanket' cannot prevent people from appealing to the incompleteness theorem where its relevance is, at best, a matter of analogy or metaphor." Sound familiar? Score: Science six, Bruno’s interpretation 1-1/2.

Unrelated Point 

In addition, you seem especially resentful of the fact that scientific research costs money, when apparently all that’s needed to do Real Science like yours is to "sit around and think about stuff." Unfortunately, that leads to opinions, rather than testable and falsifiable theories. No score for that one.

Point Seven

Finally, you again declare that simply healing wounds is a violation of the laws of physics—which is absurd. The only way to make that argument is to demonstrate a total lack of understanding of both biology and physics—which you have in spades. Score: Science seven, Bruno’s interpretation 1-1/2.

 

Summary

Bruno, do you see why you’ve lost this argument? It’s because you acknowledge the uselessness of applying scientific principles to situations where they are already declared not to apply (ideas, non-physical systems, more complex systems where macroscopic averaging dominates, etc.)—but you only recognize it ONCE.

In all the other cases, you made the same mistake that you accuse the "moral relativists" of. You take others to task for arrogance and the tendency to distort facts to fit into their presuppositions… when, by your own admission, you do the exact same thing.

I accept your surrender, since you have no logical alternative.

P.S.: On August 31, you posted this: "As a demonstration of my ‘good intentions,’ I will make a few last points, then slip back into the netherworld, never to bother the good folks on W2W again."

Unsurprisingly, it was another lie from a halfwitted troll.

Thank you, everyone. The W2W blog (and hopefully, this week’s topic) can now resume. Apologies for the delay.

[b]Objectivity: The Impossible Dream?[/b]

· We all know “Be careful of word choice”—connotation, denotation.

· Word choice is important—not just structure & placement (per Gopen).

· Meaning has a social-construction aspect. You try to express your thoughts in words, and you hope the words convey that same intended meaning to the reader. But you have filters and so do they. It’s not telepathy.

· But that’s not the whole story. Just because writing is an imperfect means of transmitting info doesn’t mean “all bets are off, all meanings are equally likely.”

· Which brings us to rhetoric vs. objectivity. As tech writers, objectivity and neutrality of tone are important to us….

My initial notion for a capstone essay involves the approach to style standards embodied in in the tech writing genre, with particular attention to the "transparent" style favored in procedural documents such as user guides.

The way I see it, this topic can be explored from the perspective of variable meaning and imperfect conceptual communication, as Sharples discusses in Ch. 6 and (to a lesser degree) Ch. 4. My position is that, although meaning is always at least partially contextual—a 'social construct' of sorts--that's not the same as declaring (as Gopen does at one point) that meaning is actually [I]trivial[/I] compared to structure and placement.

Even though every word we write represents a rhetorical choice and carries its own connotations, planned and unplanned, I don't accept that neutrality is an unrealistic goal, or that we should abandon our attempts at objective, [I]narratio[/I]-style tranfer of information (per Sharples) in technical communication.

Would this be an appropriate topic, or is it too broad and meandering?

[b]New media directions:[/b] Sharples cautions against making wild and unfounded predictions about the effects of new technology, and rightly so. Even his own, more mild, predictive efforts seem speculative to me. Few experts look as stupid as those who were solemnly predicting the “death of the book” over a decade ago… or even today.

What IS this human compulsion to try to predict the future? We see it as a quadrennial obsession with our presidential elections, and we see it every day in technology journals and magazine articles.

[b]Personal computers:[/b] The hype surrounding PCs is a good illustration of this. Nobody suspected in the early 80s that computers would ever be a common business or household item. Why would they? Computers were for data crunching, and they required skilled, trained operators.

What nobody recognized was that most users of midsize computers [I]weren’t[/I] using them for “computing” at all. As Don Norman points out in [I]About Face[/I], people used them for three things only: 1) spreadsheets, 2) word processing, and 3) games.

None of this had ANYthing to do with “computing.” In fact, some computer programmers actively resented people taking their devices and ‘twisting’ them to unsuitable purposes.

But today, about two decades later, that’s STILL how most people use computers, with two additions: 4) e-mail and 5) Internet surfing. There’s still not much computing going on, because most people have no interest in “computing.” And the industry never expected this new application of their systems.

Predicting the future is always a sucker's game.

[b]Revising:[/b] Take PC-based writing as an obvious example. As Sharples notes, the “big news” about PCs, as far as tech writers were concerned, was that you could revise online without printing an entirely new proof copy.

Finally, revision could be a part of the composing process itself—it was as easy as hitting the backspace key or clicking a mouse a few times. THIS was a revolutionary step forward for writers. It made writing easier; which made people write more; which encouraged them to plan and revise “as you go,” resulting in (occasionally) better quality writing.

Does anyone think this was a planned goal of the first computer programmers and technicians?

[b]Productivity:[/b] There’s a danger in jumping into [I]Wired[/I]-style enthusiasm for technology’s “unlimited potential,” however. Sharples notes that many of the expected gains for increased PC technology have simply not materialized.

Or in some cases, gains in productivity have simply been offset by increased expectations.

“You can process an order in 20 seconds? Great! Then we’ll fire our on-floor sales staff and require you to process 6,000 orders a day.”

“You can revise the budget projections at the click of a button? Great! Then I want to see 3-D, full-color graphs of all our projections from now on. And I’ll get you the numbers sometime next week instead of today.”

Technology, as Cooper cautions us, does not actually solve problems. It sometimes gives us the tools to TRY to solve a problem… but the mere application of technology alone doesn’t improve anything.

[b]Writing your own adventure story:[/b] This lengthy exploration of how children could generate their own content, and use a computer system to turn it into an interactive adventure game, was… well, it was okay, but it didn’t really seem to make any point about writing.

Only at the very end did Sharples make a comment that resonated with me: “Because the program took away the need to concentrate on low-level details such as handwriting and spelling, the children were able to devote their attention to style and organization. The result was that they wrote better, with less effort.”

To me, that’s a powerful effect. Everything you can do to get “trivia” like form and tools out the way and focus on your CONTENT makes that content better.

[b]Cheap shots:[/b] Regrettably, Sharples closes the book with a few uninformed and ill-considered “attack” quotes from people who disdain online writing entirely.

Paul Roberts declares that writing in short chunks for online consumption is “without question, hack writing.” Sharples seems to agree, stating that online text “generally serves as an extended caption to an image or video.”

This is utter garbage. Sharples should know better. True, many news sites focus a lot on audio and video clips; but many more present solid chunks of text, essentially transferring their news articles online with only minor formatting tweaks. We are not becoming “TV consumers,” as Sharples and Roberts seem to fear. Text is alive and well on the Internet.

As for Roberts’ claim that “brevity and blandness” are the next literary style… again, I must cry foul. If blandness were the norm, why would so many text-based sites be not only popular, but famous? A number of blogs are among this group (such as—ugh—Matt Drudge’s [i]Drudge Report[/I]). (And no, I will NOT link to that swill.)

Just because Roberts is unused to this new medium does not mean that traditional concerns like style and quality are “dying out.” They’re simply changing, as they’ve changed before. And they’ll continue to change, in ways no one can predict.

[b]”Writing Together:”[/b] At this point, we’ve moved far afield from anything that directly concerns tech writing. Sharples’ chapter on various techniques for collaborative writing is interesting, but it’s not very applicable to the work I do.

[b]Techniques:[/b] The “parallel writing” technique, where specific sections are assigned to different writers, almost never occurs at my company. Rather, it [I]occurs[/I], but not in writing tasks. This is a standard practice for coding applications: “Jon, you do this window and its supporting functions; Hannah, you do this one.”

“Sequential writing” is a production-line approach, and this [I]somewhat[/I] aligns with our writing process. The initial content comes from a SME; the writer creates a draft and forwards it for the SME’s review of technical accuracy; and then the editor goes through the document for structural, grammatical, and mechanical changes. It’s a sequence of sorts, but not really what Sharples describes.

Finally, the “reciprocal writing” process is one that horrifies me. It’s collaborative “consensus” writing at its worst—endlessly discussing and analyzing every possible consequence of every concept before you ever get around to writing anything down.

I’ve been in team-writing situations, and they always—[I]always[/I]— result in horrible, low-quality writing. Isn’t that how most Mission Statements are generated? And aren’t they so notoriously bad, vapid, and meaningless that they’re a regular object of ridicule?

[b]Teamwork:[/b] That’s not to say that I do all my work in isolation, of course. I am part of a documentation team, and we support each other on various projects at various times. But this support usually takes the form of troubleshooting problems, filling in when someone’s on vacation, or handling editing and testing tasks.

Typically, each person gets their own assigned projects, and we make the most progress when we each handle our own work. As Sharples himself notes, “The group-writer is an unwieldy beast.”

I’ve seen this problem up-close with our in-house Standards Team, a well-meaning group of people brought together to compose a style guide for application interfaces. Very little was accomplished because of all the discussions and disagreements; nothing was ever resolved; and when a new member joined, all the “old issues” would be dredged up again. It was a [I]nightmare[/I].

[b]It’s not writing, but…:[/b] One analogous situation DID strike me as I read through Sharples’ commentary on self-analysis of their group-writing process: roleplaying games.

RPGs are a form of collaborative storytelling. One player (the GM) acts as “host,” providing structure and background for the effort. The others contribute ideas, proposed actions, and dialogue describing what the characters are doing, including interactions with each other and the various ‘background’ figures supplied by the GM.

There are clear constraints, in the form of game rules. Records are kept, both as GM game notes and as consequences for the main characters (on the character sheets). And the entire session takes the form of a team meeting, with a proposed plan of action that is liberally modified as they go along. Rapid shifts of mood are frequent, and the content (the story of the adventure) receives much more focus than the structure (order of scenes, ratio of dialogue to action, etc.).

[b]”Write the Way You Speak:”[/b] I don’t entirely agree with Gopen that education works by “what you can understand” at various levels, gradually revealing more and more of the truth as you progress to higher education.

I think that’s [I]partially[/I] what happens, but I believe there’s more to it. It’s my opinion that elementary education focuses first on not just the simplest, but also the most [b]important[/b] aspects of knowledge in various areas. The peripherals and complexities come later.

To use Gopen’s Civil War analogy: Middle-school students learn about slavery as the chief cause of the war. In high school, they encounter some competing factors: states’ rights and economic conflict chief among them. By the time they get to college, the full weight of all the political complexities is spread out before them. The underlying message is clear: No event is a simple as it seems.

But we didn’t start with slavery just because it’s easiest to understand; we started there because it was the most IMPORTANT factor in the war. Economic interests and claims about states’ rights were secondary, but still powerful, factors—and sure enough, they get raised at the next level of education.

All the other factors can wait till college, or even later—or not at all. Not because our simple minds couldn’t comprehend them, but because they’re fundamentally less significant.

[b]Rules are made to be broken?[/b] Anyway, Gopen uses this analogy to criticize some of the writing “rules” we learned in school as being too simplistic—and he’s largely right about that. But I don’t think he should be so eager to dismiss them as “convenient approximations for young minds.”

Rather, I think they’re the starting points of important writing techniques: the core around which more sophisticated methods can be built.

[b]Thinking about writing and speaking:[/b] Gopen claims that “write the way you speak” is bad advice because of the limitations of writing—you can’t include inflection, facial expression, body language, speed, tone, etc., that you unconsciously add to a spoken exchange.

Again, this is true as far as it goes. But I don’t discard the rule on that basis alone. “Write the way you speak” is a valuable starting point for writing style because it helps you (as a writer) focus on how you THINK.

As I said in an earlier blog entry, it’s much easier to craft a complex, wordy, and awkward sentence in writing than it is to come up with one in speech. That’s because speech is usually a closer counterpart to the way we actually think. (Not a perfect match, mind you—but closer.)

Plenty of people are gifted or even glib speakers, socially adept and able to convincingly get their point across when addressing an audience out loud. (They often rely on the emphasis elements Gopen mentioned—tone, speed, pitch, etc.) It’s only when they try to put their thoughts in [I]writing[/I] that the ideas get jumbled, strung out, pompous, interrupted, or hopelessly incoherent. Writing takes deliberate thought and planning of a certain type, and many accomplished speakers are simply not comfortable with that.

“Write the way you speak” IS a useful guideline for beginning and amateur writers. Not because they’ll be able to convey all they normally use speech for, but because it helps them match writing to their thoughts, keeping them as clear, simple, and direct as we all try to be in speaking aloud to others. (Presidential press secretaries excluded.)

[b]Sizing up the “rules:”[/b] I agree with most of Gopen’s comments on the various bits of writing advice many of us learned in school. Primarily, I agree that most of them are too simple and narrowly defined to be slavishly obeyed under all circumstances.

But I DID take issue with a few of his assessments as follows:

3. “To make it better, make it shorter.” Sorry, but this IS a good rule. Seldom is essential meaning lost by making a statement too short; it’s much easier to bury and lose the meaning by dragging things out too long.

In addition, Gopen overlooks the practicality example: People are more likely to read something short than something long. Online, brevity is essential for getting your message across, as users scan more often than they read.

6. “Vary the way you start sentences.” This bit of advice is useful for literary works (though, as Gopen notes, seldom necessary), but it’s anathema to tech writers.

[I]Consistency[/I] is the cardinal virtue of technical writing. Every procedure needs to be introduced the same way, follow the same structural approach, and use the exact same terminology for each type of action or task. “Reader interest” is moot.

7. and 8. “Never start with [I]but[/I] or [I]however[/I],” “Never use numbers or letters in prose.” I can’t comment on Gopen’s assessments here because I’ve honestly never encountered these “rules” before.

The same applies to 10. and 11.: “Most paragraphs should contain five sentences,” and “Never create a one-sentence paragraph.” Where is Gopen getting these?

13. “Always make an outline.” The use of [I]always[/I] makes it a bad rule, but the outline itself is sometimes helpful. This is particularly true for tech-writing assignments where a standard format or template is expected (proposals, quick-reference materials, training courses, etc.).

14. “Avoid the passive.” Gopen discards this rule because of the usefulness of the passive voice as a “subtle and versatile tool of expression.” That may be so, but that’s precisely why [I]tech writers[/I] should avoid it unless absolutely necessary. Subtlety is NEVER our goal.

Admittedly, some uses of the passive are valid in tech writing: when procedures matter more than actors, for example. But subtlety is not the justification there. To a tech writer, subtle = bad.

[b]The tollbooth analogy:[/b] This was harder to track than it should have been, but I get Gopen’s point. Too many businesspeople treat writing as a burden, an occasional obligation to get their knowledge “dumped out” on paper. They focus on their duty to deliver, not their obligation to make sure the info is received and understood.

In this, Gopen circles back to one of his earliest and strongest points: what matters first and foremost are the needs of the [b]readers[/b]. Not the employer, not the writer, not the profession. The readers come first.

[b]Debunking “topic sentences:”[/b] I appreciate that Gopen is going for a “free your mind” approach, encouraging us to un-learn all the rules for structure and style we learned in school so as to take a freer approach to more adult writing situations.

However, I again think he’s going too far afield in the abstract. The first couple of pages seem to suggest that the high-school paragraph structure of Topic—3 supporting statements—Restatement of Topic is not only too confining, but the very idea of HAVING a topic sentence is invalid! That’s too extreme for me to agree with.

Besides, Gopen’s building a straw man here. I’m familiar with the high-school approach to paragraph structure—and never ONCE did a teacher insist that this was the [I]only[/I] way to write or that there HAD to be three supporting statements (no more, no less). It’s easy to ridicule such a position; the only problem is that no one has actually [I]taken[/I] that position.

[b]Issue vs. Point:[/b] Gopen loses me here by introducing these terms (as a substitute for Topic) and then never defining or exemplifying them.

This is what made the chapter a frustrating experience for me. Gopen made several strong claims, but he failed to support them or even explain them clearly.

“The issue and point are often separate,” he announces… but he can’t provide any examples because “There’s no way of knowing what the point IS without context.” Then how can he back up his claim?

I must confess: Every example paragraph in this chapter didn’t seem to have any “issue” or “point” anywhere in it… unless you think these are the same as the Topic, which I was easily able to spot.

I still don’t know what “issue” means in this sense. And I think it’s because Gopen really doesn’t have a good handle on the concept himself—at least, not well enough to clearly define it and show examples.

[b]Multi-sentence “issues:” [/b] (By which I mean Topics again.) He made a good illustration of how the topic of a paragraph can occur later in the structure, often with one or two sentences used to set up the topic or introduce a point for later contrast (p. 102).

These are good techniques to know—but the topic still exists. It just doesn’t always occur as one sentence, or as Sentence One.

[b]Bricks and pools:[/b] Gopen’s “flowing pool” analogy is hard to keep track of, too. I recognize that the stolid “building blocks” model of paragraph structure is too rigid, but the flowing pool is not a mental model I can work with.

I would suggest a different analogy—perhaps that of a sketch artist. Each sentence constitutes a stroke that contributes to a greater figure. Individually, you can see a curve or a line; but only when taken together do all their interactions add up to a complete picture. One stroke out of place alters the picture, perhaps beyond recognition; but each stroke depends on the others to build the complete meaning. No sentence stands on its own.

This is also helpful when Gopen goes on to note that you can “never see the first sentence the same way twice.” Likewise, once you’ve spotted the ‘trick’ of an optical illusion, you can never FAIL to see that trick again.

You can’t go back to just seeing a random collection of dots or lines; you always see the duck (or the woman’s face, or whatever).

[b]Topic, issue, and point again:[/b] On p. 111, Gopen states that simple recognition of a multi-sentence topic is not enough to “save” the theory of a topic statement. Why? Because this includes the unwarranted assumption that “the topic sentence must always state both the issue AND the point.”

Ummm, right. Those are YOUR terms and YOUR assumption, Gopen, not mine. I never said any such thing, and I don’t recall any instructor saying that either. In fact, I don’t remember any English teach EVER talking about the “issue and point” of a paragraph, much less insisting they had to go together in the same sentence.

Once again, I feel like Gopen is attacking a straw man to promote his favored model.

[b]What’s the Point?[/b] It’s a simple question, but Gopen apparently can’t answer it in a way I can understand. He makes references to the options for a Point position in a paragraph (p. 113-115), but he can’t actually provide any examples of one.

“Which is the point sentence? The answer is hard to come by.” Well, thanks very much for clearing that up. How can you make a claim about something you can’t even define?

I’m sorry, but I just can’t follow where Gopen is leading. To me, “issue” and “point’ remain two names for the exact same thing: the Topic. And I don’t see any reason or advantage in trying to separate it into two distinct entities, neither of which can be shown, defined, or otherwise nailed down in a useful manner.

[b]More useful:[/b] Finally, on p. 121, Gopen makes a more useful and usable summation of the concept: There are two valid structures that work well for readers.
1) “Here’s the Issue that builds up to this Point, which I’ll now discuss.”
2) “Here’s the Issue, which I’ll now discuss as a way to build up to this Point.”

This, at last, is something I can get a grip on and try to work with in my writing.

[b]Types of paragraphs:[/b] As we continue in this direction, Gopen is again on firmer ground and I can make better sense of his ideas. Suggestions like “Put the main point of the first paragraph at the end (except for memos and other forms)” and “Put the main point of most interim paragraphs up front” are tools I can work with.

The comments about medial paragraphs “for dramatic effect” are obviously less meaningful to me in a technical writing setting.

[b]Note:[/b] This has probably been (for me) the most difficult chapter of all our reading so far. Where Sharples sometimes plunges into philosophical matters, he at least tries to keep the concepts clear. And whereas I virulently disagree with Jones on several major issues, he at least is straightforward in his claims.

But Gopen occasionally descends into areas where I honestly can’t figure out what he’s trying to say—and that’s troubling for a book on writing technique.

[b]Backward linking:[/b] Gopen’s 9a example is another where I see the main problem as the lack of a [I]conversational[/I] tone more than anything else. Gopen comments that the topic is too far separated from the verb, and I agree; but to me, the sentence is difficult primarily because it’s simply not how most people talk (and therefore think).

In that sense, I think rules about sentence length are valid; it’s very easy to write a sentence much longer than you would typically say out loud. And that level of artificial complication is what makes so much writing difficult to read.

Don’t forget the “reader impatience” angle, like the joke about an impatient guy tapping his foot in front of a microwave: “C’mon… c’mon, it’s been 20 seconds already! Do you think I have all [I]minute[/I]?” Readers don’t wait for much.

[b]Better transitions:[/b] I liked Gopen’s comment about forcing readers to waste too much time thinking about the structure of a sentence, instead of allowing them to focus on the content. Substance is what matters.

I don’t agree, however, that an active-voice construction of 9b would have to sacrifice the backward link or the topical focus. If Gopen’s going to insist that “there’s always a way to write according to my link-topic-verb-stress structure,” then I insist there’s always a way to make an active-voice sentence fit that mold without losing structural focus.

(It seems Gopen likes some rules, but not others—though he claims to avoid them entirely.)

[b]Stress positions:[/b] The examples are actually pretty clear and easy to understand. The interesting thing I noted, however, was that each of these “stress position” functions at the sentence/paragraph level can also work equally well as overall structural approaches at the section/document level.

For example: The “herald” stress position, which introduces the next upcoming topic, is common at all levels of writing. The topic-change technique is especially popular in technical writing, such a procedures or structural outlines.

(Side note: Example 13 is a good illustration of a sequence of thoughts that are [I]cohesive[/I]—that is, solidly linked one to the next—and yet not [I]coherent[/I]. There is no overall goal or focus to the paragraph.)

Likewise, the “cumulative” stress position, which introduces a main topic and then spells out detailed examples, is another typical structural approach for entire documents. We all learned this as the basic five-paragraph essay structure in high school, for example—and technical writers still employ this topic-string method in proposals, function guides, and the like.

Finally, the “final” stress position is seen in most corporate communications. It acts as a summary to the previous points—another typical technique from the five-paragraph essay, as well as a ‘closer’ for informal or conversational documents such as company newsletter articles.

[b]The flow of thought:[/b] This section left me a bit confused. I think it’s because so much of the reasoning behind the rewrites relied on guesswork. I had the impression Gopen was essentially saying “It depends” over and over—which may be true, but it’s difficult to [I]learn[/I] anything concrete from that sort of discussion.

[b]Truth vs. understanding:[/b] You can count me among those who find Bakhtin’s position not only “troubling,” but “misguided.” As the Pioneer plaque illustrates, there indeed ARE universal truths out there.

Our inability to be 100% definite in communicating those truths is a regrettable consequence of social context, not a desirable (or even inevitable) situation.

Again I find myself faced with all-or-nothing overstatement, as with Jones and his horror of “objectivity.” Just because we can’t guarantee 100% certainty is no reason to abandon all attempts at clarity.

Yes, context matters; we are all influenced by our environment in what we write AND in how we interpret what we read. But some common ground still exists. We’re not living in Humpty Dumpty’s country, where “words mean exactly what I want them to mean.” Meanings are fuzzy—but not totally random.

E=mc2 is based on agreed-upon concepts and terminology; it has social and political implications when written and read; but the equation itself remains objectively true.

I think the function of a good tech writer—or ANY writer, for that matter—is to express the truth in a way readers are most likely to understand. Admittedly, social context can get in the way of this understanding; but a good writer is aware of this factor and makes [I]use[/I] of it, rather than surrendering to it.

[b]Writer and society:[/b] Whew… Here, Sharples is getting into some heavily philosophical territory on deliberate usage of words as tied to ideology. This is the territory of propagandists, not responsible writers.

Demonizing the word “liberal” or calling everyone left of Mussolini a “socialist” may be popular doublespeak tactics in the political arena, but I’ll have no part of it as a tech writer.

It’s the province of the current Republican regime to blast anyone who questions their policies as “un-American,” to label anyone who questions the Iraq war as “supporting the terrorists,” and so forth. And it’s a blatant scare-and-smear tactic that’s beneath me. It should be beneath anyone with a conscience—which, of course, excuses most politicians rather neatly.

I’ve seen a bumper sticker I’m quite fond of: “Dissent is Treason. War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. … Orwell was 20 years early.” Deliberate attempts to manipulate language and popular usage for your own political ends are contemptible.

[b]Variable values:[/b] Here I see Sharples falling into what’s been called the Programmer’s Fallacy: assuming that if a value other than 1 or 0 is allowed, then ALL values are [I]equally likely[/I].

Let me explain that. Programmers, by and large, like binary logic and black-or-white situations. One or zero. They like clear-cut divisions and shy away from gray areas. Consequently, when they’re faced with situations where a range of values is possible (such as a quantity), they tend to throw up their hands say “anything’s possible… and any value is equally likely.”

Example: I once saw a budgeting application that allowed FIVE spaces for the year entry. When I asked why this wasn’t limited to four digits, I was told that, since some forecasts can go up to a decade into the future, the programmer deliberately left this space to indicate that forecasts up to [I]8000 years ahead[/I] were allowed.

This was not a customer request; it was an act of protest by a programmer who was unhappy with not having a fixed set of values to work with. “If I can’t have total control over every possible value, then I’ll just throw open the gates and allow any value under the sun!” was the pouting attitude he projected.

[b]Oh yeah, variable meanings:[/b] What does all this have to do with Sharples? Well, Sharples makes a similar conclusion when he confronts the fact that the same term can have multiple meanings for multiple audiences.

Meaning DOES have a social-construction aspect. But the fact that meaning is not 100% fixed is emphatically [b]not[/b] the same as throwing open the floodgates and saying “all meanings are equally probable!” Meaning has boundaries, fuzzy though they may be. Words are influenced by context, but they’re not infinitely variable.

True, we can’t know [I]exactly[/I] what Shakespeare or the Founding Fathers “meant” in their original writings (despite some libertarian and NRA claims to the contrary); but we can set some boundaries on what they [I]probably[/I] meant, and support those boundaries with additional writings on similar subjects from both them and their contemporaries.

(As a matter of fact, I believe we have a branch of government that devotes itself full-time to coming up with valid interpretations of those words.)

[b]Post-structuralist, my ass:[/b] What Sharples calls the “post-structuralist” analysis impresses me as overstated and unjustified. Categories are neither arbitrary nor meaningless, and acknowledging that there is some crossover and “gray space” does not render them valueless.

Dorothy Parker, for example, could be called an essayist, a humorist, [I]and[/I] a philosopher or social commentator. She fits into more than one category; we all do. Still, the categories themselves are useful.

Likewise, Ray Bradbury is usually labeled a science-fiction writer; I consider him more of a psychological writer using sci-fi props as a backdrop and framework. But he could go in either category, and the categories would still be useful.

Meaning is [I]influenced[/I] by cultural context, but not [I]solely determined[/I] by it. This is the point that post-structuralists overlook in their drive to declare that “everything’s subjective!” (We saw this attempted, with much less skill, in Jones’s book.)

“Texts mean just what we want them to mean” is the kind of sweeping—and meaningless—generalizat ion that causes me to dismiss many philosophers as weak-minded and arrogant. Their arguments are vastly oversimplified and result in perspectives that are not only impractical, but unprovable as well. In other words, they wind up circling around and around worthless mind-games without uncovering anything new or useful.

[b]Back on solid ground:[/b] Fortunately, Sharples pulls us out of their sucking abyss of non-meaning by making a number of valid counterpoints.

He notes, for example, that the “everything is a social construct” crowd is uncomfortably incompatible with solid, established fact—such as the reality of the Vietnam War. It DID happen; to declare that “history is entirely subjective” is to deny this simple and unavoidable truth. Sharples gives an excellent quote from historian Richard Evans:

“The insistence that all history is discourse diverts attention from the real lives and sufferings of people in the past. Auschwitz is not a text….”

Exactly.

[b]Professional ethics:[/b] Sharples also notes that writers (and tech writers in particular) do not set out to mislead readers with their own personal/social “spin” on what they write about. We don’t simply follow along with popular belief or pseudo-science (unless we work for the Cato Institute or Heritage Foundation).

Instead, we have a professional code of ethics and a set of design principles we’re all obliged to follow. We do our best, within the limitations of cultural influence and context, to promote understanding; we present fact and opinion separately; we justify our claims and give references; and we acknowledge the limitations of our arguments.

Jones should read this section—several times.

[b]Getting the point across:[/b] Finally, Sharples notes, “a furniture designer who sells an unsafe chair is not ‘artistic’, but simply a danger to the public.”

Likewise, writers who produce text in a way that fails to communicate have no excuse of “pushing boundaries” any other pseudo-artistic claptrap; they have simply failed as writers.

“Post-structuralism is no excuse for bad writing,” Sharples comments. I couldn’t agree more.

[b]”Artificial” emphasis?[/b] Gopen claims that boldface, italics, underlining, etc. are essentially NEVER necessary in a “properly” structured sentence. He qualifies this later, noting that sometimes it may be necessary if there’s no other structural way to produce the emphasis.

But I think this is an exaggeration. For one thing, the word you need to emphasize is often not a noun—or even a verb. In personal writing particularly, where the “conversational” tone is more important, the limitations of written communication make emphatic formatting more necessary. You simply can’t always convey the same range of emphasis in writing that you can in speech—and emphasis formatting is a way to handle that.

Of course, technical writers have an additional factor to consider: in-house style conventions. For example, a typical procedure at my company applies boldface to anything the user must type or click:

“On the File menu, click [b]Print[/b].”

Likewise, the online platform uses [u]underlining[/u] for hyperlinks; research and journalism standards often call for [I]italics[/I] in book titles; and so on.

[b]Comparative weight:[/b] This is a curious sort of analogy, but I do like Gopen’s recommended technique of “promoting” and “demoting” clauses to shift the emphasis.

[b]Competition for emphasis:[/b] The examples Gopen gives of different word orders and their positive/negative reactions were interesting to me. The conclusion seems to be that

1. And end position gives special “weight” to that phrase or clause;
2. A main-clause structure does the same, but to a lesser degree; and
3. A combined end-position AND main-clause structure combine to form an overwhelmingly powerful impression.

Length seems to rank much farther down the list in importance. Consider this example: “Although Fred is a good husband, a caring father, and an altogether nice guy, he beats his dog.”

Fred’s positive traits have the advantage of length in this sentence, but the main clause in the end position still rules the final impression: Fred is scum.

[b]More on emphasis and placement:[/b] I think this is a good general rule to keep in mind: An end position, particularly if it’s also a main clause, will impress most readers as “the point” of the sentence, regardless of anything else you express elsewhere.

“The preliminary results are not persuasive, but overall the proposal is sound” is essentially a positive statement, even though the final clause is dependent.

“Overall the proposal is sound, but the preliminary results are not persuasive” is a much more negative statement—again, even though the final clause is dependent.

“Although the preliminary results are not persuasive, overall the proposal is sound” is a 100%, ironclad positive statement. There is almost no chance that most readers will come away from reading this with anything but a positive impression of the proposal.

[b] “I am a jelly donut!”[/b] I think Gopen is overreaching when he claims that a fumbled word choice is [I]irrelevant[/I] compared to a powerful structure.

After all, people do remember Kennedy’s powerful statement; but we also all know that he made a mistake in that statement too.

If word choice didn’t matter as much as (or more than) structure, would we have endlessly circulating lists of embarrasing quotes from Dan Quayle and George Bush? Word choice matters.

[b]Language and music:[/b] Here again I think Gopen is exaggerating his claims, perhaps for dramatic impact. It’s true that a given note has no inherent meaning—which makes the overall impression dependent on the context of the other notes.

However, language DOES have at least some inherent meaning. Granted, it’s not absolutely determined: Gopen correctly notes that a word such as “yellow” can have multiple meanings in different situations, and even suggest different shades (golden, mustard, ivory, etc.).

But at the same time, yellow NEVER means “tall” or “bicycle” or “Thursday.” The fact that words can have more than one meaning, and nuance in different context, does not mean they’re [I]inherently without meaning whatsoever[/I], as Gopen suggests.

The existence of dictionary definitions for words “doesn’t matter,” according to Gopen; words have meaning [I]mainly[/I] because of the company they keep. (He goes on to claim that they also have meaning because of the order in which they appear.)

This is a gross exaggeration. You cannot simply substitute a random word for the one you’re using and rely on placement and context to convey the meaning for you. If that were true, the sentence “Jack Thursday the voted rectangular,” would be as meaningful as “Jack threw the red ball.”

Word choice matters. Yes, context matters, and so does word order—but not to the point that word choice is trivial.

[b]The Gopen technique:[/b] Okay, here I have a genuine problem with Gopen. Gopen baldly declares that everyone should follow his structure of Topic à Verb à Midsentence à Stress Position. He also claims that anyone who has a ‘problem’ with following this formula—for example, noticing that it makes their writing dry, predictable, or flaccid—simply has [I]nothing worth writing about to begin with[/I].

This cuts no ice with me. That sort of arrogant posture—“If my method doesn’t work for you, it’s because you’re vapid and useless!”—not only accomplishes nothing, but it admits of no possible failure or flexibility to his method. It’s like faith healing: if it works, Gopen gets all the credit; but if it doesn’t, the student must not have had enough faith. Bull!

“Don’t feel bad,” Gopen soothes us, “If your ideas written in my structure seem stupid and empty, it’s just because your ideas ARE stupid and empty. We all have dumb ideas sometimes.”

Yeah, right. Or maybe your Magic Formula doesn’t apply 100% to every possible situation, Gopen. Ever think of that?

[b]Backward linking:[/b] It’s an interesting phenomenon that readers usually scan for some link back to the previous sentence, and won’t pay much attention to what you’re saying until they find it.

I’m reminded of Steve Krug’s book on Web design, [I]Don’t Make Me Think![/I]. In it, Krug notes that Web users don’t actually READ pages—they scan them at top speed and click the first link that seems even Remotely like a possible pointer to what they’re looking for.

It doesn’t matter if a better link is further down the page; the user won’t sit still long enough to find it. Instead, they seize the first likely (or less than likely) link or button they find and click [I]immediately[/I].

This also reminds me of a point covered in the previous chapter: Readers will scan forward in a sentence until they find the next necessary component for a viable sentence structure. In plain English, this means they SKIM the content until they find the verb (or, if they have the verb, the object). Everything that comes in between is filler… and the more of it they have to skim past to find the next link in the chain, the less satisfied they become with your writing.

To be continued…

[b]Emphasis:[/b] This is murky territory for me. I couldn’t pin down a specific rule to follow in determining where the “primary emphasis” lies, and I sure couldn’t pick it up simply from reading the examples.

I can’t fault Gopen for this; I just don’t see what he’s explaining.

[b]Subject-verb confusion:[/b] When Gopen mentioned “one of the most common structural problems,” I was sure he was about to describe the pseudo-verb or pseudo-object I’ve encountered (and been confused by) on so many occasions.

It’s a hard one to explain, but easy to recognize:
“The retailer prints the receipt and labels for the shipping carton.”

When you first read this sentence, it’s VERY easy to assume that “labels” is actually another verb, describing what the retailer does. Only on the second or third read does it become clear that “labels” is actually a noun. But because of the sentence structure, it misleads you by posing as a verb—a “pseudo-verb,” I call it.

This, I think, is another variation of Gopen’s Rule #4: readers expect a subject-verb combination and will apply that assumption at the first juncture that seems likely. Once you state a subject, the reader seizes the next likely candidate for a verb. If you put another word that they can MISTAKE for a verb, you get the confusion noted above.

“Waiting for the verb to appear is like waiting for the second shoe to drop.”

[b]Stress positions:[/b] Hoo boy, am I lost by this point.

If I “go by ear,” I assume there’s a a stress point at the comma position between any two clauses. But maybe that’s what Gopen calls “emphasis” instead.

And where is the stress position in the last sentence of 8a? “Do this, especially when X.” I would ALWAYS put the stress just before the comma and “especially.” But Gopen says that can NEVER be a stress position. I’m stumped.

Maybe this sentence doesn’t HAVE a stress position? But Gopen claims that every sentence should have one!

“All these problems occur in a society like ours, which has….” Where’s the stress position here? I WANT to say it’s just before the comma; but again, Gopen says it can’t be. Sigh. I’m lost.

And I have the distinct, and disturbing, impression that this concept will be a cornerstone of applying anything that Gopen elaborates on further in the book.

[b]The good and the bad:[/b] Gopen opens by rather dramatically stating that there’s “no such thing as a bad sentence.” I doubt this.

He explains that a sentence containing a dozen grammatical errors could be a “good sentence” in the right context—for example, the context of illustrating grammatical errors. But in my view, that doesn’t make the sentence good; it makes it a good example of a bad sentence.

I understand the point Gopen is making—you must always judge a sentence in its proper context—but I think he’s overreaching here in his attempt to avoid setting any rules or boundaries at all.

Besides: I know about the annual Bulwer-Lytton fuction contest, where entrants compete to write the objectively worst opening sentences of all time. No context is given, but how could you argue that these are genuinely awful sentences?

· Sister Mary Agnes coughed, spit a gobbet of blood, and tossed the severed goat’s udder over the rim of the canyon.
· Her face was lined like a patchwork of meandering rivers strung together over a bed of waffles.
· There are things a good detective can feel in his bones, and Dillon Shane knew that Jasmine Collinsworth did not drown in her sleep on New Year’s Eve.
· “Totally grody to the max,” murmured Patty as wimpy Max Grody slouched across the Valley through the dark, stormy night, grabbed her, and like, you know, gagged her with a spoon.
· Whining and cringing had been good to Willie Fisk.
· Let me tell you how good luck, hard work, blind ambition, and the love of a good woman brought Rock Sledge from obscurity to the job of chief salesperson in Peoria’s third-largest shoe store.
· “Aw, hell!” groaned the contessa who, up to that point, had shown no interest in the conversation.
· “The coming of the Iron Horse will bring great prosperity to the Redman,” the railroad agent promised, but the Indians had reservations.

Still, Gopen’s main point is a good one to remember: “If most readers can make of your sentence what you wanted them to, quickly and easily, then (and only then) is it a good sentence.”

[b]The outside perspective:[/b] Gopen makes a good point when it comes to writing clearly and understandably; the writer can’t always judge clarity because he or she already knows what the sentence “really” means. This, after all, is partly why our work documents are reviewed by an editor. The outsider’s perspective is invaluable in determining whether the writing genuinely makes the point the writer hoped for.

The coffee-stain analogy is an excellent one: just because YOU remember what you were thinking when you spilled the coffee doesn’t mean anyone else will absorb any meaning from seeing that stain. Likewise, declaring something as “Inconceivable!” won’t mean as much to a person who’s never seen [I]The Princess Bride[/I].

[b]Reader expectations:[/b] This point can’t be stressed enough: Your job as a writer is to meet reader expectations as you explain your concepts to them. Creativity should come from the content, not the transmission of meaning itself. Don’t make readers work for your meaning.

This concept carries over to usability as well: The job of an interface designer is to match the user’s mental model of how something works. The [I]content[/I] you present is what sets you apart; the [I]way[/I] you present it should be as conventional, clear, and unadorned as possible.

Joel Spolsky, author of [I]User Interface Design for Programmers[/I], has a cardinal rule: “An interface is well designed when it does exactly what the user expected it to do.”

[b]Word order:[/b] Now we’re getting into new territory for me… and, I suspect, new for most school-educated writers as well. Elementary education focuses so much on basic construction and valid grammar that the actual [I]impact[/I] of certain stylistic choices is seldom discussed.

Gopen’s two initial sample sentences (“What would be the student reaction accorded the imposition of such a requirement” vs. “How would the students react to such a requirement”) was interesting to me.

I, too, felt that the second sentence was inherently more readable—but not because of length or active vs. passive voice. To me, the second sentence has a more conversational tone: it uses the words people more often choose when they’re speaking. And in my view, the words people use when speaking are a more accurate reflection of how they actually think.

Gopen halfway touches on this with his third option for preferring Sentence 2: word choice. But he dismisses it by noting that “most people can understand all the words in both sentences,” which strikes me as a dodge.

It’s not a black or white situation. Just because people [I]understand[/I] all the words in Sentence 1 doesn’t mean they [I]prefer to use[/I] those words themselves.

It’s my contention that readers find a construction “easier to read and understand” the more closely it reflects their own internal thought processes and preferences in using language. A good rule would be: “If it sounds the way I’d say it, it makes more sense to me.”

To be continued….

[b]Rules for students:[/b] Many of us learned “rules” of writing in school that we treated as ironclad and inviolate—often because that’s how they were presented to us. “Never start with [I]and[/I],” a teacher would bark, “and never end with a preposition.”

These were useful guiding techniques for schoolchildren; it helped us avoid sentence fragments and other awkward, unworkable constructions. But because we were getting the grade-school, introductory version of tips for writing, we never learned that these were NOT actually carved in stone.

[b]Guidelines:[/b] Just last week, a co-worker called me over to ask about some edits I’d made. I had rewritten a sentence to start with “and.” Wasn’t this breaking an important rule, she asked me anxiously? Of course not! The sentence was fine. But her training back in high school still had her shying away from perfectly workable constructions that would have helped her communicate more clearly to her fellow adults.

Gopen correctly labels these as “guidelines or conventions,” not rues. Their purpose is to improve the probability of communicating effectively to your audience… otherwise, why write at all?

[b]The dangers of omniscience:[/b] Gopen makes a strong point here for cautioning us against assuming the reader will “get what we mean.” WE already know what we mean, so to us most of our writing seems blindingly obvious. How could anyone possibly misinterpret THAT, we wonder.

In truth, it’s surprisingly easy to misunderstand what someone has written—it happens all the time. Where do you think the rules for Netiquette came from?

This is why no writer should edit their own work—just as no developer should test their own application. It’s too easy to glide along knowing what was “really” meant and not notice that the meaning never reaches anyone outside your own skull.

Why should we make all this fuss about “the needs of ignorant readers”? That’s the same question developers ask me all the time about “clueless users.” And it deserves the same answer. “Because you’re not writing/developing for YOU; you’re doing it for THEM.”

As Gopen states so well, “The needs of the reader are the controlling concerns for writing.” Everything else, from your own ego to the interests of your employer, is secondary.

[b]Grammar and structure:[/b] Since this book does not focus specifically on tech writing, Gopen plans to address both grammatical concerns and structural ones, including rhetoric (in the sense of “persuasive” writing).

Still, I think there will be some valid structural information usable by tech writers too.

[b]Interpretive Factors[/b]

[b]Diction:[/b] Gopen claims that diction (word choice), seemingly important, only accounts for about 15% of the transmission of meaning, while 85% is “all structure.” This is quite a claim; I’ll be interested to see how it’s backed up.

[b]Structural location:[/b] “Controlling structural placement may well be the single most important skill a writer can develop.” Gopen certainly doesn’t shy away from making bold claims!

I look forward to seeing some examples of these principles in action and (if proven) how they can apply to my own tech writing work.

[b]Difference in emphasis:[/b] The concept that readers always give more emphasis to words at the end of a sentence has never been presented to me before. It seems likely (though I’ll want to see the research that supports this claim), but it can have a profound impact on how we write.

We’ve all heard the different-emphasis routine for a common sentence, such as “What are you doing here?” or “Why did you do that?’ Depending on where the emphasis is placed, the meaning it conveys can be entirely different, and in reaction to totally different situations:

“WHAT are you doing here?” (How dare you swing that croquet mallet at my china cabinet?)

“What ARE you doing here?” (I didn’t think we invited the commoners to this buffet.)

“What are YOU doing here?” (I could’ve sworn Vito killed you and dumped you in the bay!)

“What are you DOING here?” (I never expected YOU to rescue me from a giant gorilla!)

“What are you doing HERE?” (You’re supposed to be in a wedding across town… your own.)

Emphasis, even in writing, can make a powerful impact on the meaning you convey.

[b]Introduction:[/b] I’m impressed with Gopen’s opening theme: that the most important person to consider in any writing task is the READER.

Gopen makes the very powerful and practical point that nothing matters but reader comprehension. It doesn’t matter how long and hard you work on a piece, what guidelines you follow, or whose tone you’ve faithfully reproduced; if the reader doesn’t get your message, the writing is a failure.

[b]Word order:[/b] I’m surprised at Gopen’s claim that “the greatest percentage of clues for interpretation {among readers} is not word choice but rather the [I]location[/I] of words within the sentence.”

That may be true, but I’m skeptical so far. If so, it has some powerful implications for how we perform tech writing. (Unfortunately, Gopen’s book—like Sharples’s [I]How We Write[/I]—is targeted to a general writing audience rather than tech writers specifically.)

[b]Turning instinct into knowledge:[/b] I really like this idea. Gopen states that his purpose is to take what seem to be “common sense” principles and methods, often picked up from extensive practice and reading, and turn them into conscious, deliberate choices.

In other words, he wants to turn an art or craft into a valid [I]science[/I]. “Clarify your thought process,” Gopen declares. I love this approach.

[b]Text placement:[/b] When the issue of text placement on a page is discussed, I immediately think of Web design. Web users have expectations about “what goes where;” your primary job as a writer is to meet those expectations, not “get creative.”

I prefer to surprise and impress my readers with the [b]ideas[/b] I present, not my writing style.

[b]Non-obvious changes:[/b] Gopen properly cautions us that many revised versions may not seem that different at first read—or even on further consideration. I know I’ve had problems like that in the past with graphics and layout work.

The important thing, as Gopen points out, is not that it “reads” or “sounds” better, but that it can be proven to FUNCTION better for the reader. And I agree. That’s what matters.

[b]Predictions, not rules:[/b] This work is driven by predictions of what most readers will do (how they will understand, interpret, and react) in response to different structures most of the time. Understanding your readers’ mindset is the, just as it is with usability testing.

I’ve heard complaints before that our in-house usability testing seldom produces “quantitative” results, i.e., data that can be plotted on a graph. But that’s not the purpose. Our goal is to obtain [I]qualitative[/I] data—an understanding of how our users think and react, what they expect.

Good design (and good writing) comes from understanding your audience’s mindset, not testing their reaction time.

[b]Writing images:[/b] I agree with what Sharples calls the “conventional view” of writing—that the content is much more important than the layout or format in which it’s presented. (Recall my earlier comment about walking through a museum and commenting on the frames.)

I agree that layout and use of white space DO matter for readability, and that illustrations can be powerful aids to understanding.

But Sharples loses me a bit with his quote from Umberto Eco, rhapsodizing on the joys of a medieval writing desk and its implements. Love of old media and extinct printing methods just doesn’t impress me. It also doesn’t make a strong point for how writing and content production work NOW. Why go to the trouble of linking writing in a [I]backward[/I] direction (i.e., bookbinding) when your audience is looking [I]forward[/I] in their work?

If you want to reach tech writers about layout concerns, talk about PC-based layout TOOLS—desktop publishing, for example. Every time you mention “camera-ready copy” and “saddle-stitch binding,” you lose my interest. You sound more like a grumpy old curmudgeon complaining about how “kids today don’t know good music like Guy Lombardo; they don’t even know how to use a slide rule!”

[b]A novel appearance:[/b] Sharples comments that what we’re used to in the U.S. as the “standard” layout and format for a paperback novel is actually distinct to our culture. He says that these standards are different elsewhere, leading me to wonder about any examples of these different approaches.

[b]Advertising and layout:[/b] The play on standard safety warnings used for advertising a car (“Keep in hot place, do not keep lid fastened”) definitely seems like it would capture attention because it breaks a cultural stereotype.

But Sharples should also be aware that media-savvy generations tend to spot such techniques more easily and recognize them as attempts to manipulate us. Anything self-consciously “funky” is easily discarded as annoying and dishonest. Does anyone still try to read WIRED magazine?

Witness the usability studies on “Banner Blindness”—anything that LOOKS like an ad gets ignored automatically by PC users, who will later swear that no such text was anywhere to be found on the page! As we learn to recognize clever layout and wording techniques, we also learn to filter them out and ignore them.

[b]Page layout:[/b] “Putting a picture [I]above[/I] text leads with the image, and the text is seen as elaborating on it… reversing positions puts the text as the lead, with the image showing an example or consequence.”
This is an interesting layout concept that I’d never encountered before.

[b]Sample back-cover layout:[/b] This is a good example of what NOT to do in designing a book cover. The geometric breakup of panels looks like “modern” art (that now looks dated and self-important).

Irony and self-referentialism are a tired pose; they do not impress me. And in attempting to look “modern,” they actually look like bad old 60s sci-fi movies: awkward attempts to take on a futuristic look that are now laughably silly.

[b]Underlining:[/b] Sharples misses another opportunity to point references forward rather than back. He discusses the drawbacks of underlining as “intrusive, breaking up the space.”

This is true, as far as it goes—but the MAIN reason you don’t underline any more is because underlining always indicates a [I]hyperlink[/I]. Get with the times, Sharples!

[b]Typeface:[/b] I already knew that sans-serif fonts are easier to read at small sizes (our corporate style guide usually calls for Arial or Verdana online).

But I had never seen the ‘children’s book’ font called Sassoon Primary. This is an EXCELLENT font! I wish I could find a free copy of it and use it in more of my writing.

[b]White space:[/b] Considering how important and powerful this technique is, I’m surprised that it’s never taught or even discussed in any writing classes I took in school. Even my technical writing courses, though they made mention of white space, never got into any specifics or examples of exactly HOW to use it effectively.

[b]Images and interfaces:[/b] It’s true; the Web is full of truly hideous interface and page designs. I’m a frequent visitor to Web Pages That Suck, the Interface Hall of Shame, and other cautionary sites that exhibit atrocious—even criminally painful—designs inflicted on hapless users.

That’s what convinces me that programmers and developers should NOT be allowed to design interfaces. They don’t have the tools, the skills, or the perspective to do it properly.

[b]Painter Profiles:[/b] Next, we explore another means of categorizing writers’ composition methods: by analogy to more visual arts. Van Waes and Wyllie’s combined efforts produced five categories:

[I]Watercolorist[/I]—Th e Mental Planner who writes all at once (time permitting) with few pauses or revisions (a “non-stop writer”). They seldom make plans on paper and prefer to review and revise on screen, seldom losing the sense of the overall text.

[I]Architect[/I]—The External Planner is similar to the Mental Planner in some ways, but makes greater use of written headings and plans (an “initial planner”). They follow the standard school-taught method of Plan, Compose, and then Revise.

[I]Bricklayer[/I]—This writer has a mingled Planner/Discover approach. They build a document piece by piece (“first phase writing”), correcting spelling and grammar as they write. But they seldom revise afterward, and then only more technical corrections.

[I]Sketcher[/I]—Inverti ng the previous emphasis, this involves more Discovery than Planning. This is the most common approach (the “average writer”) because it emphasizes flexibility: pencil in a possible plan, jump around as needed to preserve thoughts, and rearrange where appropriate. The Sketcher makes minor corrections during composition and structural ones later.

[I]Oil Painter[/I]—This writer is a pure Discoverer (all “second-phase writing”). A draft or a few notes might be all they need to start plowing through their ideas, following up afterward with multiple revisions. And they usually revise a printout to get a sense of the whole document.

[b]My problem:[/b] I do ALL of these at various times. When I’m writing for personal use, I usually take the Architect or Watercolorist approach: let it all flow, do most of the planning and organizing in my head (or at most with a couple of advance headings to fill in). I often review and revise on screen.

But I also make minor technical corrections as I go; I honestly cannot let a misspelled word stand if I see it. This is the Bricklayer approach, and I’m so used to this technique that I probably couldn’t do otherwise.

However, my work often requires me to set up a general outline and then simply begin “writing what I know.” When I think of a relevant point, I jump down to add a note there (and sometimes remain rather than returning to the original section). And when I want to get a solid sense of the document’s overall structure and flow, I rely on printouts—just like the Sketcher and Oil Painter.

[b]Oh, well:[/b] Again, since these are all valid methods, it doesn’t really matter which one I favor and when. As long as I’m functional in getting the writing done clearly and accurately, my boss is happy. And as long as I meet my internal quality standards, I’m happy too.

[b]Tips and tricks:[/b] Walking and coffee were the most popular habits to sustain and rejuvenate the writing urge, eh? Well, those won’t do me a bit of good. I don’t drink coffee, and it’s too hot to walk outside about nine months of the year. Fortunately, since I’ve never tried these techniques, I’ve never come to rely on them either.

[b]Timing:[/b] Like most people, I’m probably most productive in coming up with new text in the mornings; by afternoon, I like to revise and edit existing work.
Of course, my personal writing is far less regular: I write when an inspiration hits me. Sometimes it’s several pages all at once, other times it’s a few garbled notes for later review. But my personal writing is driven mainly by inspiration and opportunity to record it.

[b]Fear of writing:[/b] Okay, this is something I simply don’t understand. I can’t even imagine what it feels like to have a fear or dread of writing. It’s like “loneliness:” I know the dictionary definition, but I can’t say I’ve ever experienced the emotion itself. I don’t grasp the mindset that COULD experience it.

That’s not to say I’m Daredevil, of course; “the man without fear” is definitely someone other than me. I fear a lot of things—death, crippling injury, angry sharks, etc. But to be afraid of WRITING?

As the Tick said, “I just can’t get my mind around it!”

[b]Fearless writing:[/b] Sharples didn’t address this… but he mentioned writers who create high quality prose even with a “crushing lack of confidence in their abilities.”
What about the reverse? Aren’t their writers with supreme, and unjustified, confidence in their abilities who eagerly produce crap on a regular basis? I think any publishing house editor would attest to this.

That’s why the fact that I’m usually confident when writing doesn’t mean I’m actually a good writer. It’s as common to have unjustified arrogance as it is to be needlessly modest.

[b]Mental illness:[/b] Now THAT finding was disturbing. Writers have high rates of alcoholism and manic-depressive disorder compared to the general population. I wonder why that is? I certainly hope it’s not a cause-and-effect situation, because I plan to be writing until my fingers fall off.

(It didn’t hurt that Sharples closed by quoting Asimov, my favorite writer on ANY topic.)

[b]Being a writer:[/b] This was a challenging chapter for me. Not because the concepts Sharples addressed (writing techniques) were inherently complicated, but because I’ve never really tried to analyze or identify my OWN method of writing.

And I still have no clear idea exactly how I operate. I suspect it varies depending on circumstances—deadlines , blocked-out schedule space, interruptions, and (of course) whether I’m writing for business or personal reasons. But I still don’t really know my own thought process in creating text.

[b]Discovery/Planning:[/b ] On its face, the distinction seems clear.

[I]Discovery[/I] involves learning during the writing process itself; you may start with some rough notions, but you mainly develop your ideas during the act of composing. I know I do that a lot.

[I]Planning[/I], however, involves mentally composing your ideas and planning your approach before you ever sit down to actually draft the text—whether that plan is written or mental varies. This approach “fills out” a predefined structure—and I know I do that a lot, too.

[b]I’m a Discoverer![/b] At first, I assumed I was a 70/30 split between Discovery and Planning. I recognized myself in the quote from Wolfe, a Discoverer: “I wrote too much again… my enthusiasm would overpower me, and I would write thousands of words on a scene which contributed nothing of vital importance.”

I do that ALL THE TIME; I repeat the same point at least two or three times per effort, especially in my personal writings.

[b]I’m a Planner![/b] But the more I read about the two methods, the more I realized that my writing often embodied the Planning approach too. When I’m creating a work document for my company, I work with templates and outlines. I follow a strict planning process and ruthlessly consider and discard all possible ideas and concepts before I allow them to enter my document.

I’m a stern gatekeeper at work because I know it’s easier to leave something out from the start than to extract it later on.

[b]I’m Confused![/b] So I’m stumped. Sharples agrees that no one approach is best, unless you wind up at an extreme that results in either paralysis or logorrhea. So maybe it doesn’t actually matter where I fall between those limits.

To be continued…

[b]Revising:[/b] Sharples notes that the typical student’s introduction to revising—putting in a lot of hard work and getting back a defaced document covered with angry red marks—is anti-motivational.

I agree. In fact, I got into the habit throughout school and college of never revising at all. My first draft, with only a few minor tweaks, was usually my final draft as well.

[b]Leaving well enough alone:[/b] Interestingly, Sharples cites research that showed how a planned document is usually better than a reworked rough draft—but also that a reworked draft is usually WORSE than the initial draft itself! In other words, “revising makes it worse.”

[b]Writing for others vs. self:[/b] I appreciated this distinction. As a tech writer, I’m naturally obligated to write primarily for the benefit of an audience—always putting their needs and preferences first.

But as an adult writer, I also write to please [I]myself[/I]; I try to satisfy my own standards of quality and take pride in a good effort.

[b]Revising sequence:[/b] Sharples notes two approaches: a “back-and-forth” method of writing a section, then revising; and a continuous “revising while composing.” I think my own approach leans more toward the latter method.

Of course, all my writing occurs online, so there’s no “trail” to follow of my thought processes. This may be partly why I’ve never given much thought to exactly HOW I write my materials (both for work and for personal use).

[b]Proofmarks:[/b] Similarly, Sharples’ recommendation that we make more use of “proofmarks” is lost on me. I write 99% online, both at home and at work; there’s no need to spend time on markups when I can just make the changes directly on screen.

Don’t get me wrong: as an editor, I know the value of proofreader’s marks on a first draft—especially for change tracking. But it seems odd that Sharples digressed into a primer on how to draw boxes and arrows here.

[b]Margin notes:[/b] I use these all the time when performing a structural edit on a document. In fact, I’ve also used them as I read through our textbooks in this class—making quick comments and references for later reconstruction when I compose a blog entry.

[b]Breaking the cycle:[/b] Sharples comments that the act of revision can in turn spur a new round of composing as you elaborate on a point or get reminded of a detail or concept you forgot on the first round.

My question is, “[I]When do you STOP?[/I]” It’s very easy to get caught up in an endless cycle of revisions, either striving for perfection or just rambling from thought to thought with no destination.

[b]Gender neutrality:[/b] Although I agree with Jones’ statement that “whether or not you agree that English is sexist, you should tailor it to avoid offending your audience,” I think this is an incomplete rationale.

You should also use gender-neutral language simply out of a sense of personal ethics. Don’t just “adjust to appease.” Instead, recognize that a bias is present and act to eliminate it from your work. Expedience is not a virtue.

[b]Corporate bias:[/b] My only comment on this area—writing as a representative of your company and incorporating their preferred “spin” in representing themselves to customers or the public—is to ask another ethics question. Would you lie for your employer?

To me, the answer is obvious.

[b]Political bias:[/b] Jones notes that “much propaganda is used to deceive.” I dispute the use of the word “much.” ALL propaganda is used to deceive; that’s the purpose of propaganda. If the statements were true, they wouldn’t be called that derogatory name.

[b]Racial bias:[/b] Ahh yes… another touchy subject. And regrettably, this is an area where reverse discrimination is still largely unrecognized or discredited.

The truth is just as Allan and Burridge noted: “ALL human groups have a derogatory term for at least one other group they have contact with.” For example, the Cheyenne word for their own people translates literally as “human beings”—implying that all non-Cheyenne are other (less) than human.

[b]Racial issues, contd.:[/b] This is a particularly hot issue in terms of black criticism of other blacks, given the recent remarks by comedian Bill Cosby at Howard University. There is a small, but disproportionately damaging, sentiment among some black Americans that “going mainstream” in their use of English amounts to selling out their heritage and culture.

This is not only putting pride above progress, it actively hurts those who do make an effort to improve their lives and join the middle class (or even upper class). If speaking and writing clearly mean you’re “acting white,” then aren’t you setting up a definition of black = ignorant and inarticulate?

[b]Cultural bias:[/b] I have a friend who visited Japan for several years, and he confirmed that their cultural approach to communication truly IS more indirect. “After a few days, you’d kill for a straight answer,” he remarked, “but it doesn’t do any good. They talk they way they’ve always talked.”

He had an interesting point about Japanese perceptions of American-style communications, too. To his Japanese friends, his own style of writing and speaking amounted to “screaming all the time—very loud and very rude.” They couldn’t get used to his approach any more than he could get used to theirs (at first).

[b]Cultural hyperbole:[/b] A thought occurred to me as I was reading about other cultures and their less direct communication methods. Most of these “other approaches” are noticeably longer and slower than the typical straight-to-the-point style popular in the U.S.

Is this likely to change with the increase in fast communications, especially online? The emphasis in the current business climate is on doing everything faster and “speeding up change.” Will the Internet eventually make slower modes of communication unworkable?

[b]Age bias:[/b] Jones notes that bias against the elderly is common, but hard to prove because of the deceptive tactics employed by various companies trying to crowd out or discourage older workers. “It’s almost impossible to find examples,” Jones writes, “because their documents are so sensitive and possibly subject to litigation.”

But Jones then seems to be calling for tech writers to actively participate in this cover-up! This is where I draw the line. If I see my employer discriminating against older colleagues and taking the “coward’s way out” by instructing me to gloss it over in my documents… I will not comply. In fact, I will make sure that I spell those situations out as explicitly as possible to force my employer to confront the situation.

It’s our duty—as writers and as citizens—to refuse to be an accomplice to such acts, even if it costs you your job. My heroes have always been whistleblowers.

[b]Political correctness:[/b] David Crystal suggests that “anyone who used (anti-PC) vocabulary risked severe condemnation…. Organizations, fearful of public criticism and litigation, went out of their way to avoid using (offensive) language.”

To which I can only say: [b]What’s wrong with that? That’s exactly what SHOULD happen![/b]

Look: Asking the government to get involved in banning offensive speech is a very bad decision. We all know that. So how else do we discourage offensive comments except through social pressure? The “PC” movement is the best approach for dealing with rudeness and cruelty that may be legally allowed, but is still socially unacceptable.

True, there can be overreaction. And extreme forms of PC terminology are a common source of fun (just like frivolous laws and lawsuits). But even those jokes contribute to awareness that a problem exists.

Eventually the pendulum will swing back again; I believe we’ll ultimately settle somewhere in the middle. Maybe [I]African-American[/I] will become the norm, or maybe we’ll just go back to [I]black.[/I] Maybe [I]differently abled[/I] will stick, or maybe we’ll go back to [I]disabled.[/I] But [I]cripple[/I] and [I]darkie[/I] are no longer an option in polite society. And we have so-called Political Correctness to thank for it.

[b]Bias:[/b] Here we go again… plunging back into Jones’ favorite theme, the “inevitability of bias.” Or more properly, the horrific specter of objectivity, which must be smashed at all costs.

[b]Inhumanity:[/b] You know, the August 2001 issues STC’s [I]Technical Communication[/I] magazine included an article that sparked a major controversy in the tech writing profession. It was called “Cruel Pies,” by Sam Dragga and Dan Voss. Voss and Dragga’s claim was that, in attempting to portray data objectively and without judgment, tech writers were guilty of “inhuman and inhumane behavior.”

Reporting the number of wildfires in California with a simple bar chart, or showing causes of death in the U.S. as an unadorned pie chart, they insisted, was betraying and misleading readers by not emphasizing the human impact of those numbers.

I’ve always remembered that article (and the letters that followed it)—basically because Dragga and Voss were full of crap. In their idiotic view, tech writers not only have an obligation to reveal their own feelings about a statistic—they must sprinkle cutesy and inappropriate clip-art throughout their documents to make sure everyone else feels the same way!

This is what abandonment of objectivity gets you: an embarrassing loss of credibility and completely fair accusations of partisanship and interference with clear communication to your readers. Any reporter who did such a thing would be fired—at least, I HOPE they’d be fired.

[b]Bias, contd.:[/b] But accuracy and clarity are less important to Jones than pushing personal views where they don’t belong. By setting up his personal definition of “rhetoric” in direct opposition to the hated “objectivity,” Jones continues his crusade to batter down our belief in facts over ideology.

The curious thing is that Jones doesn’t deny that bias is a bad thing: he seems more than willing to explore the many negative consequences of both deliberate and unconscious bias (as he does with quotes from Gould’s [I]Mismeasure of Man[/I]—while reaching the opposite of Gould’s conclusions, of course).

But having confronted the problems that bias can bring, Jones doesn’t offer tips or techniques to identify and eliminate it. Rather, he suggests we throw up our hands and say, “Hey, everything’s always gonna be biased. Get over it!”

Maybe that’s all Jones can come up with… but I prefer to hold myself to a higher standard than that.

[b]Gender bias:[/b] I’ve commented on my own encounters with this type of stupidity before. The gender-specific terms for behavior, for example, elevate the sexually active man as a ‘stud’ while condemning the female ‘slut.’ And so on, ad nauseam.

I was refreshed to see the acknowledgement that gender bias and stereotyping go on in BOTH directions—a fact often overlooked in the drive to improve the lot of women. But this is a persistent problem for both genders in our society. Both of us are faced with restrictive roles and unyielding expectations that don’t work to our advantage.

[b]Gender stereotypes:[/b] And stereotypes hurt men just as they do women. Take the existence of numerous “domestic violence shelters” and hotlines… for women only. All discussion of domestic violence, especially in the political forum, describes it as a crime [I]by men[/I] committed [/I]against women[/I]. Of course, the truth is that women can and do batter and even kill men.

But our stereotypes of “women are caregivers” and “men are violent” won't allow us to acknowledge this fact. When a woman DOES kill her boyfriend or husband, the immediate assumption is that “he drove her to it.” No such generous assumption is made for a man who kills his wife.

[b]Gender in the workplace:[/b] Another consequence of gender bias is the cultural attitude that men are “disposable” somehow. We cast men in roles as protectors and warriors because it’s OKAY if they die—but women must be protected and sheltered from violence at all costs. Why are we indifferent to homeless men, but outraged to see a homeless woman?

This shows up even in the workplace. Yes, the notorious “glass ceiling” is still a problem of bias. But its unrecognized counterpart is the “iron floor.” The most dangerous, dirty, and uncomfortable jobs (from mining to garbage collection) are uniformly done by men. Women may have menial positions—as maids, cooks, dishwashers, etc.—but the actual DANGER is reserved for men only.

[b]Gender—a side note:[/b] The gender-bias section does include at least one misstep. Jones quotes Nilsen as saying “A young girl is told to act like a lady, meaning to be quiet and dainty. A young boy is told to ‘be a man,’ i.e., strong and virtuous….”

But that’s a false parallel. In the paragraph just before this, it was noted that the counterpart of Lady is Gentleman, not “man.” And “act like a gentleman” said to a young boy means just what “act like a lady” does to a girl—sit down, be quiet, and behave.

[b]Gender-specific language:[/b] Jones comments on how “society women” used excessive modifiers in their speech. This made me wonder: Are these linguistic traits characteristic only of women in certain upper social classes? Do minority and poor women talk this way?

One of feminism’s failings in past decades was its emphasis on the comfortable, upper-middle class white suburban woman “entering the workforce”—where poor and minority women had been all along. Their experiences would naturally have been different. Would their language be different as well?

To be continued….

[b]Intro to composing:[/b] Sharples describes composing as the act of “designing text,” which I always thought of as handling the visual aspect of the [I]completed[/I] content. In other words, layout and white space were post-production issues for AFTER the writing occurred (unless I was working within a template).

However, the broader definition of “design” that Sharples uses actually covers a lot more than just visual appeal.

[b]Transparent communication:[/b] This goes back to an earlier point I made—the regrettable fact that we don’t have access to telepathy to provide perfect transfer of knowledge and perspective from writer to reader.

Instead, we have to [I]encode[/I] our thoughts in text and then hope they filter through the reader’s own mindset and perceptions (their mental “schema”) to become roughly the same meaning we originally intended.

That’s why it seems so important to me that we always write as clearly and unambiguously as possible. And in tech writing, we must carefully control our vocabulary so that the same word always indicates exactly the same concept and no other. In many ways, “variety” can be the bane of understanding.

[b]Working memory:[/b] An interesting concept. I’d heard of short-term and long-term memory, but “working memory” is a new term (outside of computer systems, that is).

Sharples’ point that most spelling errors occur near the end of sentences is a fascinating illustration of this concept—and a phenomenon I’d never noticed before. (I assume it’s true, but I’d like to see the studies to back it up.)

[b]”In the style of…”:[/b] Imitating someone else’s style—especially in parody form—can be a great source of humor. One of my favorite SF books is a collection of short stories “in the style of” Doc Smith, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and so on. They constitute amazingly on-target parodies of most of these writers’ personal quirks, favorite issues, character clichés, and so on.

[b]Style guides:[/b] These guides tend to be lengthy, Sharples comments—and he’s not kidding. The APA, Associated Press, Chicago, and “Read Me First!” style manuals are all much longer than you’d suspect.

Only the Microsoft Manual of Style (our default reference at my company) is noticeably shorter and easier to scan through. Which is probably a large part of why my company chose it.

I note that “be consistent” remains one of the most popular rules for ANY guide to style, long or short.
I was surprised to learn that formality is “the most studied aspect of style.”

But I was even more surprised to read through Sharples’ list of formal style rules (“Avoid contractions, do not address the reader as “you,” etc.) and realize that my own company’s official style—which I’d always considered on the formal side—didn’t qualify!

[b]Structure 1—Procedures:[/b] The classic narrative approach is not only easiest to write AND read; it’s also usually the best choice for straightforward procedural and step-by-step instructions.

[b]Structure 2—Macro-structures:[/b] We’ve seen the concept of “story formulas” before, and Polti’s list of possible dramatic situations looks very interesting to me. I wonder if I could find the book this came from; the James Bond plot examples alone would be worth it.

This talk of standard structures and plot developments makes me wonder: Is there a boundary between being “true to canon” and being “formulaic”? When does satisfying tradition become trite and unimaginative? As a tech writer, these issues seldom come up in my work, but it’s interesting to ponder.

[b]Detective formulas:[/b] I don’t quite agree with the statement that the standard detective-story formula involves a “sympathetic, but frail main character.” Sherlock Holmes was far from frail and even farther from sympathetic! He was a masterful, remorseless engine of pure logic with a formidable presence and great capacity to handle any situation, no matter how dangerous.

I suppose Sharples was thinking more of the Ironside or Miss Marples type of detective.

[b]Genre:[/b] I’m not clear on Sharples’ point here. He says that combining content, style, and structure produces Genre—which then truns composing “from a problem-solving activity into a largely pattern-matching one.”

I’d like to see some examples of what he means here. What sort of pattern-matching is involved?

[b]Easy vs. complex texts:[/b] Sharples claims that easy texts that follow a familiar pattern eventually leave readers feeling “unsatisfied,” due to our love of being challenged. Eventually, he claims, we become resentful of this commodified treatment and seek out “more demanding texts that make fewer concessions to the reader.”

We do? This is news to me!

As Jones noted in his book: No one is ever insulted by text that’s easy to understand. I have NEVER complained that a given book or article was too clear, too straightforward, and too easily understood. I can’t even imagine such a complaint, or the mindset that would produce it.

I’ve read easy books and hard ones; if the content is worth enough to me, I put up with the complex and difficult writing style. But I never enjoy it or seek it out.

And I would never consciously try to produce anything that was hard to read or understand.

[b]Intro to technical paragraphs:[/b] I must give Jones some credit. He freely quoted an expert who disagreed with his everything-is-rhetoric stance. Dona Hickey noted that “all writing can be said to be expressive except for highly technical discourse, in wich the convention is the [I]absence[/I] of voice.”

Exactly! As with “rhetoric,” there seem to be differing definitions about what a “personal tone” entails.

[b]Personal/impersonal:[/ b] As I expected, Jones swiftly acted to frame this distinction as nothing less than a choice between good (personal) and evil (impersonal), with all possible crimes of boredom and inhumanity laid at “impersonal’s” feet.

His first paragraph in this section recalls the “pretentious jargon and gobbledygook… when writers choose to be impersonal.” His tradition of setting up strawmen to vilify the crime of “objectivity” continues. And it remains every bit as convincing—that is, not at all.

Throwing in some Zinnser quotes about how a personal tone can liven up prose doesn’t help matters. Jones would rather twist those neutral comments into a condemnation of anything less than the full-bore warm-n-fuzzy approach.

He then moves into legal disclaimers to put the final nail in the coffin of impersonality. (Of course, legalese has very little to do with technical writing and everything to do with corporate paranoia.)

“Impersonal technical documents would achieve their purpose far more effectively” with a personal tone, Jones ends by insisting. I have to wonder what it is about science and objectivity that inspires such horror in Jones.

[b]Attitude/emotion:[/b] This is interesting, I suppose… but in the vast majority of real-world technical documentation (system instructions, manuals, etc.), the readers don’t particulary CARE what the author’s feelings are on the subject. Nor should they care; the material should be written with the [I]user’s[/I] needs first and foremost, not the writer’s.

[b]Warmth, empathy, anger, etc.[/b] These are all very rare exceptions to the typical tech-writing situation. You should display a level of empathy for your reader insofar as you express the concepts in terms of “what’s in it for me.” But that’s all. Your only other obligation is to present the material in clear, usable, and meaningful manner… and get the heck out of the way.

“Familiarity and cuteness” are fine for e-mails and personal communications with friends. But they really don’t work in most business situations.

[b]Ethos:[/b] This section discussed how to establish your own credibility and effective “voice” with the reading audience.

The section on “establishing trust” drove home a point to me: One of the most common and effective ways to build trust is to admit your own failings and limitations. But doesn’t this devalue your credibility as an expert voice?

As for “establishing deference”… no, thank you. I don’t grovel, and I don’t respect anyone who does.

[b]Humor:[/b] I love adding humor to my writing (though you may not get that impression from this blog). Sadly, my company expressly forbids the injection of humor into official buskiness documents. No fooling—our company Writing Guidelines have a section devoted to warning us against it, explaining what a disastrously bad idea any attempt at humor would be. And I don’t even work for the IRS!

[b]Intro to technical paragraphs:[/b] Jones notes that technical paragraphs often have NO topic sentence, relying instead on section headings or titles. This is a non-trivial point to remember.

[b]Length:[/b] When Stott comments that paragraphic depends on your subject, audience, and degree of seriousness, he should also add “your presentation format.” Specifically, shorter sentences are preferred when writing in an online format such as a Web page.

This is not only a tradition, but a practical tip as well: it’s more difficult to read words on a screen, so shorter is always better.

Jones’ notes that technical paragraphs are “generally no longer than three or four sentences.” I would add, “… if that much.” Online, one or two sentences should be the default.

[b]Page layout:[/b] The important concept to keep in mind here is to design for [I]quick scanning[/I], not thorough reading. One thing I’ve learned from usability is that “users don’t read, don’t WANT to read, and will not read no matter how much you insist.”

Steve Krug’s excellent book, [I]Don’t Make Me Think![/I], reminds Web content creators that users are not sitting down with you site and a cup of hot cocoa, absorbing every word and pondering all the implications before they click.

Instead, it’s more helpful to picture them as flying down a highway… and your page is a billboard at the side of the road. They’re going to spend at most a couple seconds scanning it before they move on. Your structure and most important material must be presented so they can fully grasp it and act on it without a moment’s hesitation.

On the point of headings, I note that the Sharples book, [I]How We Write[/I], is actually in need of some clearer and more scannable structure itself. Some headings and subheads would make his chapters much more reader-friendly.

[b]Specific to general sequence:[/b] This is the opposite of how I normally create my technical documents, with one prominent exception. When we first create a project’s scope document, the introduction takes the form of “problem/solution”— explaining a situation that exemplifies the business problem and expanding out to a more general “why we need this application” statement.

[b]Definitions:[/b] I notice that in this chapter, Jones describes a term-first, then-explanation structure. In Chapter 7, he suggested that new terms should be introduced at the END of a sentence to give proper emphasis. Is this a contradiction?

[b]Effective flow/cohesion:[/b] This is an interesting concept. I’ve never tried to achieve “cohesion”—at least, not consciously. None of my writing instruction to date has even touched on the notion of having each sentence build on the previous one. Of course, straight instructional text doesn’t usually take the form of paragraphs anyway, so transitional words aren’t usually needed.

[b]Larger segments in technical prose:[/b] Jones repeats his rhetoric-oriented mistake here when he claims that the major genres of technical writing are “proposals, manuals, and reports.”

Granted, it’s much easier to teach writing style with proposals and reports as your examples—but this doesn’t give the student adequate preparation for what you’ll ACTUALLY be writing as a professional tech writer!

The more common types of writing done in my job almost never include proposals. Instead, we write help systems, project communications, reference guides, installation manuals, and Web sites full of reference information. All of it is typically short, to the point, and very focused on relaying pure information.

Persuasion (the common definition of “rhetoric”) doesn’t enter into it, nor do the typical concerns of style and structure. There are no five-paragraph essays in the tech writing profession. And there are darn few proposals and reports such as we typically see in college classwork.

Jones could use some experience in real-world tech writing work, outside the academic environment.

[b]Sentence style:[/b] Judging from the introduction, this will definitely be new territory for me. My high-school and college courses never even mentioned aspects such as combination, repetitation, rhythm, elegance, and so forth.

[b]First review:[/b] This is all refresher material; I note that in tech writing, we usually favor declarative and imperative sentences. (Though I’ve never seen a categorization of sentences by function before.)

[b]Styles:[/b] Periodic, balnced, and loose? Never heard of ‘em! The introduction Jones gives for the first two convinced me that they are to be avoided in tech writing.

[b]Parallel structure:[/b] For whatever reason, this is the rule that I find most often violated when I edit the work of nonprofessional writers. Every time I see a bulleted list, I know that the elements will wander all over the map and bear no relation to each other.

[b]Combining techniques:[/b] I wonder if these are often an unconscious process to those who never receive formal introduction like this. Long-term reading can often enable you to “pick up” a general sense of flow that in turn gives you an (untrained) “ear” for what sounds good.

I also note that many of the combining techniques mentioned here produce sentences that are [I]far too long[/I] to be useful in technical writing.

[b]Emphasis:[/b] I did welcome the discussion of emphasis, which I’ve never had spelled out for me before. But I note that Jones recommends putting new technical terms at the END of a sentence—the opposite of the “dictionary” approach I usually see in technical materials.

[b]Rhythm:[/b] Uhh… I’m not sure what to say here. I agree that rhythm can have an effect on readers, and that it requires skill and careful attention.

But the example Jones gives of rhythm is AWFUL. The sentence flat-out [I]sucks[/I]; I would be embarrassed to have my name attached to something that ugly. Is this an example of what to [I]avoid[/I]?

[b]Variety:[/b] Turk and Kirkman’s tip is a valuable one: “Anything unfamiliar, complex, and new will require stating in shorter sentences… familiar information can be coded in longer ones.” This is a very good point, and one that nonprofessional writers (such as programmers) often overlook when they try to draft documentation.

[b]Elegance:[/b] This section was sketchy and included no examples. Jones claims that the history of scientific and technical communication includes many classics. This may be true (though he doesn’t name any), but are they classics because of their writing style, or because of the IDEAS they contained?

[b]Sentence faults:[/b] This is more basic grammar review. Some examples would be helpful in the Fragments section, where Jones states that “intentional fragments are commonplace.” Does he mean in headings and section titles?

I see no distinction between fused and run-on sentences the way they’re presented here.