RE: Front and Back matter in User Guides (where do you put the companycontact info)

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Caroline Tabach wrote:

> All of our User Guides (and other documents)  contain the 
> contact info (addresses, phone numbers, emails) of our 
> offices at the beginning of the book beneath copyright info.
> The contact info also appears on the page that would have 
> been the back cover (if we were printing).
> 
> Someone looking through one of these books (who is neither a 
> writer nor an English speaker), told us this information 
> should not appear in the beginning of the books and asked why 
> it was there.
> 
> My answer was, well, the original professional who put them 
> together did it like this, but I did not have an authoritive answer.
> 
> I have now checked in the Sun guide "Read me First" which 
> tells you to add this info to the beginning of the book.
> 
> Is this how everyone does it?

No, not everyone. I could tell you how we do it, but that would miss the
point: There _is_no_right_answer_. 

There are probably scores of ways to present this information, and which
one you go with depends on individual or corporate preferences and a
host of variables and judgements regarding them, which eventually come
down to, "I like this one; let's go with it." 

So, why would you let some random person looking through a book decide
the "right" way? (Unless this person is the new boss, and even then, I'd
push back, arguing against requiring a basically arbitrary and
time-wasting change in many different places.)

The answer to why it's there is, "Because that's the convention we've
standardized upon. It sounds like you prefer some other convention.
That's interesting... About that meeting this morning..."
 
:-) 

Richard


------
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------




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