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Good Plain English: The problem with writing manuals
- lolc 10y agoI stoppped reading mid-article. Then I decided to come here to indulge in the metaness of criticizing the article critical of language style guides that criticize classics. Silly business.
- j10sanders 10y agoI think it was critical of the language style guide's language style outside of its criticisms of classics, but then somehow finds the real issue is the meaninglessness of words in the common-folk language of Trump compared to the eloquent (yet also straight-forward) language style Obama. In other words, I'm confused too.
- lolc 10y agoOh if it went down that path I'm glad I didn't continue reading. Trump-style is not common-folk style, it's rambling-folk style.
- ouid 10y agook, I'll start. I think the article starts on its best point, and then never comes back to it. There is less editorial process than there used to be. It's not inconsistent to fail to adhere to your own style if one of the methods that you use to adhere to your own style is an editor. Writing communicatively is hard, but testing whether your writing is communicative is easy, just have someone (else) try to read it, and tell you if they found it convincing. Why did the author not come back to this? It seems like it should be the point of the article.
- m52go 10y ago> Bernoff is a Canute in an ocean of ordure. As such the gist of his advice is unimpeachable. Get to the point. lolwut much hypocritical so verbosity but bernoff's book is brilliant.
- Spooky23 10y agoMany manuals turn into this weird passive-aggressive ass covering exercises, especially internal manuals. The low for me was a 16 page manual for using an RSA token!
- mcarden 10y agoIt is at least slightly amusing that the ambiguous title led me to expect that the article would be about the writing of manuals, rather than a discussion of manuals explaining how to write.
- dredmorbius 10y agoLikewise. I also found the title ambiguous, and the style of the piece itself an exemplar of much it rails against. Verbose, excessivly so, and somewhat over-endeared with itself.
- ValleyOfTheMtns 10y agoThere is nothing more beautiful to someone than their own creations, even if it contradicts their advice about the craft.
- emmelaich 10y agoVery few guides follow their own advice. William Safire satirised it nicely in his Fumblerules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumblerules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumblerules http://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/safire.htm http://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/safire.htm
- jaclaz 10y agoAlso, JFYI, Umberto Eco's Rules for writing (well): http://gioclairval.blogspot.it/2010/02/umberto-ecos-rules-for-writing-well.html http://gioclairval.blogspot.it/2010/02/umberto-ecos-rules-fo...