TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I totally agree that when "numbering is expected" you have to do it. If your
system of providing feedback demands section numbers to quote then you
*must* include them.
However, there are many ways of highlighting information that needs
changing, and section numbers are not *essential* to the task (while good,
clear headings *are* essential to all technical documents). If, however, a
reviewer *must* return a list of required changes to the writer, I concede
that quoting numbers is probably neater than saying "...in 'User Interfaces'
on page 29". But when working with *directly* marked-up paper or electronic
drafts, for example, the existence of *any* type of heading is irrelevant to
the task of finding and applying the comments.
Looking closely at the various replies I have received to my e-mail, I get
the feeling that section numbers are actually more useful to the *writer*
than to the user who - I still maintain - couldn't care less whether "User
Interfaces" is a main heading, a sub-heading or a sub-sub-heading, or even
whether it is part of Chapter 1 or Appendix D. Users are far more interested
in the information being available and correct (and easy to find by heading
and page number).
I suspect that a lot of the disagreement may stem from the different tools
we are using for writing. Using something like FrameMaker, where the
insertion of automatically updating cross-references is a breeze, there is
no need to make the heading easy to find *by the author*. I don't know much
about other tools, but I guess things are not always this easy?
A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
+++ Miramo -- Database/XML publishing automation. See us at +++
+++ Seybold SFO, Sept. 25-27, in the Adobe Partners Pavilion +++
+++ More info: http://www.axialinfo.comhttp://www.miramo.com +++
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
