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Absolutely not. Engineering design docs should be terse and to the point. Documentation is not a medium where you want to tell a story, because that makes it i
by constantcrying 3y ago
Absolutely not. Engineering design docs should be terse and to the point.
Documentation is not a medium where you want to tell a story, because that makes it instantly much less usable, since people will read it at random parts to attain specific information.
- vaylian 3y agoMaybe we have different ideas about what a "story" is, but stories are about defining a context and a progression from that context to a more advanced state. You can use technology in ways that the inventors never intended, but most of the time you want to know in which context the technology has been developed and which problems it can solve. That is why it makes sense to have stories in technical documentation.
- constantcrying 3y ago>but stories are about defining a context and a progression from that context to a more advanced state. Exactly. Starting a story 80% in makes it nonsensical. If your engineering docs are nonsensical if you open them at 80% you have failed as a technical writer. >most of the time you want to know in which context the technology has been developed and which problems it can solve. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Imagine your dish washer manual going over the history of dish washers interspersed with comments about how it functions. That would be insane, useless and unreasonable.