RE: Writing to your audience

Subject: RE: Writing to your audience
From: "McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
To: Dan Goldstein <DGoldstein -at- riverainmedical -dot- com>, "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 14:23:24 -0500

I was being facetious.
Either y'all are actually in the majority,
or you think you are.... :-)

I'm in that bunch who have an audience that's
all over the world, probably speaks English as
a second language, has technical training
(Engineer, tech, systems admin), is familiar
with our product or our type of product...
or has never heard of such things before yesterday...
has a background in data security...
or didn't know such a thing existed until s/he
drew the short straw yesterday...
and so on.

Some come from cultures where it is expected
that both conversation and instructional material
get right to the point, and not waste time with
rambling or ambiguity. Others come from cultures
where directness is rude and off-putting. Still
others... well, I don't know.

What they all have in common (so far) is that
they work in English, 'cuz there is still not
a business case to translate my docs. But that's
this week.

But wait. I said our audience at least has some
sort of technical background. Well, that's for
the ones who use the products. Apparently the
docs are also read by people who evaluate and
authorize big purchases for their companies (or
government departments, etc.), as well as by other
folks whose job it is to audit processes and
procedures on contract to our customers or our
customers' customers.

- k

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Goldstein
> Subject: RE: Writing to your audience
>
> We who write internal documentation know our audiences very well. Are
> there really so few of us?
>
>
> -----Original Original Message-----
> From: McLauchlan, Kevin
>
> Let's leave aside, for the moment, those few... those lucky[?] few
> techwriters who ever actually get in the same room with their audience
> (or on the other end of an e-mail exchange, for that matter...).
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References:
RE: Writing to your audience: From: Dan Goldstein
Re: Writing to your audience: From: Phil
RE: Writing to your audience: From: Porrello, Leonard
RE: Writing to your audience: From: Matt Sean Gras
RE: Writing to your audience: From: McLauchlan, Kevin
RE: Writing to your audience: From: Dan Goldstein

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