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Subject:Re: Using names (was: Who's the author?) From:"Gray,Gary P" <GRAY -at- BOS -dot- MSMAIL -dot- IDX -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 15 Feb 1995 09:27:00 EST
Marguerite wrote
>Do as you will, folks, and I realize I'm probably in the minority here,
>but I STILL think that putting people's names (your own or someone
>else's, especially without their permission) into manuals is tacky and
>unprofessional. Examples are most helpful when they use names that are
>meaningful to the user, not ego trips for the writer/programmer.
Err... how do you do this in a user's manual? How can you tell what name
would be "meaningful" to the user? You don't know their names when you're
writing (at least I don't, and if you have that much knowledge about
your audience, I really envy you!) I assume here that people aren't
bending examples around just so they can put their name in a book.
But if you're going to use a name anyway, why not a real one? And
if you're using a real name, why not your own or a co-workers?
Granted, you should be careful. For example, on our medical billing
product, it would be really easy to give my co-workers all sorts of rather
nasty and probably embarrassing medical procedures to go through. But
we use people's names, or, in some cases, one person's first name and
another's last name. I don't think there's ever been a problem with it here.
And frankly, I see nothing whatsoever wrong with it.
