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Anita Legsdin wrote:
>
> What do you do when, after you've done your best to use simple language and
> clear procedures, your users ask for jargon? I'm writing a manual for a
> product that's designed to go to more than one customer (after it's
> finished). The one we have a contract with right now is testing the
> software and the manual. They have comments like, "you don't include
> procedures for provisioning!" or, "Please add procedures for degrowth."
> This company has developed so much specialized jargon that it's nearly
> impossible to understand what it is they want. In many cases, the
> procedures they're looking for are in the documentation, but under
> "removing equipment" instead of "degrowth", or "configuration" rather than
> "provisioning".
>
> How far should one go to satisfy the jargon needs of a customer? If we put
> it in, the documentation won't be understandable by other clients.
> Possibilities: a conversion table that says "For information on X, see Y."
> or, add their unusual words to the index.
In the telecomm industry (or at least the parts I've seen, mainly Nortel),
"provisioning" is absolutely standard terminology. That's what you do to
switches to set up phone lines and other connections. It is a transitive
verb; you can "provision the switch" or "provision the connection".
"degrowth" is a new one on me.
I'd say go as far as you can with the index. putting in lots of entries
like: "provisioning: see configuration". I once wrote some microcomputer
documentation for an audience consisting mainly of IBM mainframers, and
the index entries like "DASD: see hard disk" got a lot of enthusiastic
praise.
Can you lay hands on a glossary for their corporate docs, or one for
their industry? It might pay to run through that looking for terms to
add to your index. Their complaints probably haven't caught them all.
Can you adjust tiles to get the terms they want into your TOC?
Configuration (Provisioning)
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