FW: About that whacky MS MoS for TPs

["Brierley, Sean" <Sean -at- Quodata -dot- Com>]

Forwarded by Request.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Iannone, Shauna K. [VIS-Non J&J] [SMTP:SIANNON -at- VISUS -dot- JNJ -dot- com]
Sent:	Thursday, June 21, 2001 10:45 AM
To:	'Brierley, Sean'
Subject:	RE: About that whacky MS MoS for TPs

My email server is blocking my ability to post to the list because it forces
something in my messages to HTML format even when I have it set to
Plain-text, but I felt urged to respond.  Feel free to forward to the list
or not.

The MS MoS is a nice concept, built on the foundations of a long tradition
of such industry-specific manuals used in journalism, medicine and the like.
However.  It completely disregards the needs of the end user to impose a
brand-specific standard that can function poorly in actual use. When writing
for a non-technically-inclined audience, jargon terms confuse the user.
While it may be useful in providing the technical community a standard for
publications referencing Windows-based software, it is not necessarily
appropriate for all audiences,--and it is the audience that comes first in
determining the road to clarity of expression.  Assume your user never read
the MS MoS.  Would he or she necessarily understand what is being said?  Are
you using terms or conventions with which they are unfamiliar?

Another thing to realize: the MS MoS is not being submitted by an
independent party, grounded in a linguistic, literary or even grammatical
background.  It is being submitted by a commercial party with a vested
marketing interest in being perceived as the standard within the industry.
Anyone working with the MS grammar checker in Word has to be painfully aware
of how often the utility tries to "correct" grammatically correct statements
with grammatically incorrect ones. The MS spell checker is limited by the
breadth of the limited dictionary provided. In short, Microsoft's other
writing-related tools are decidedly fallible; why should we treat the MS MoS
as if it were the bible of technical writing?

Just my opinion, 
Shauna Iannone 
Tech Writer, American Computing Technologies, 
currently supporting 3GT CIM at Vistakon 
-------------------------------------------- 
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a
hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build
a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate,
act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a
computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.

-- Lazarus Long 




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