empowering the user and traditional tech writing - style discussion
Patrick W. Barnes
nman64 at n-man.com
Mon Sep 4 17:41:24 UTC 2006
On Friday 01 September 2006 11:35, Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com> wrote:
> We need to discuss our writing style approach; I think it's too late for
> FC6, so we need to stick with what works for now. But Paul W. Frields
> challenged me with the idea of empowering the user and having a specific
> style to support that.
>
> In traditional tech writing, we try not to use pronouns yet keep an
> active voice. It makes for a cleaner writing, easier to translate, and
> has fewer assumptions implied about the reader, which helps to make it
> more accessible. It also sounds less like marketspeak[1] and
> cheerleader-writing[2].
>
...
>
> However, a blanket rule to "never use 'you'" might be wrong. At the
> least, we can discuss here what we want to do. Perhaps we can break
> some new ground, or at least join the 21st century. ;-D
>
First, I'd like to point out that I haven't forgotten about the Style Guide,
and I fully intend to consider this thread when I resume work on it.
I come from the camp of "never use 'you' unless engaging the reader
directly" -- an approach that has served me well. As I work on the Style
Guide, I intend to make it an example of the best case scenario for technical
writing and avoid "you" altogether, but some documents, particularly how-tos
and FAQs, will take a slightly different style, where "you" might sometimes
be appropriate. Marketing materials, such as banners and flyers, are a whole
different ballgame. Their styles are very different from the technical
documents but are something we will sometimes tackle. I will try to cover
some of the style variations in the Style Guide as it progresses.
--
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64 at n-man.com
http://www.n-man.com/
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