chapter6

Chapter Six Response
Again, Dan was able to connect this chapter to his work with WebHelp. As a writer, his primary goal is to give people the information they’ll need in order to complete certain tasks. To do this, his instructions have to be both clear and concise, and need to be divided up in such a way that his reader can easily find what they’re looking for. However, he has also found it difficult to cut, as he’s working with a large, highly complex application. So now he’s hoping that the other five guidelines listed in Chapter 6 (page 94) might give him some help.

Caitlin – being the wizened, philosophical type – found Chapter 6 somewhat depressing. Even beyond the fact that much of the work of the technical writer is online help, it’s obvious that more and more people get ALL their information off the web. Reading Redish, it seems that almost everyone simply skims most of their content. People want the main points laid out in bullet points, or said in //as few words as possible//. In other words – people want information, but they don’t want to do much to get it. This includes reading (beyond online help – but to news and blogs). What is this doing to our collective reading comprehension? What does this say about our ability to study, analyze, and think clearly about the information we’re given? How far will the mantra of “Cut! Cut! Cut” go?

She notices that her Comp 101 students have difficulty fleshing out complete sentences, and struggle even more the mechanics of compound sentences. The TAs were also taught that students learn by being continually exposed to good writing, and by having continuous practice. By that logic, how likely is it that some of the problems she’s seeing (and which she //didn’t// see when she was walking two miles to school, in the snow, both ways) reflect that kind of textual information that students are being exposed to: bullet points, headings, and convenient chunks of information. Yes – modularity is convenient, it’s efficient, and it’s what people want. But what happens to the writer who builds the “wall of words”? And what happens when you’re trying to give instructions and information on something that’s very, very complicated (an issue Dan is dealing with)? What kind of choices will we have to make between giving the reader all the information vs. giving them digestible snippets? One possible answer, from Dan's perspective, is to look at “Less is More” in a different way. He used to think that saying meant cut stuff out, but what happens when a writer cannot cut anymore? One answer to simply keep dividing the information, so a) the writer avoids the “wall of words,” and b) Presents less information on each page. But all of the information is still available. This may sound like a simple, elementary concept, but for Dan... this was an epiphany. Outside of WebHelp, Dan agrees with Caitlin that society's “collective reading comprehension” seems to be below average. Helpless apostrophes are attached to words that don't need them, commas are spliced, and the compound sentence confounds Comp 101 students daily.

While the concepts discussed in chapters 6 are useful for their intending purposes, they do raise certain questions to the standards of American English. Language evolves, but what happens when it devolves?

My Response:

I have to both agree and disagree with what is being said by this group pertaining to this chapter. While it is true that most people searching information on the web want to get their answer and leave, it is also true that there are still some people out there who read all the text.

I, for one don’t want to waste time looking for the information I’m looking for, but I don’t always want to rush the answer. Some of the things I look up are historical in nature or pertaining to some interest of mines. I want to spend as much time absorbing that information and less time finding it. One of my favorite sites is Wikipedia. While it is true that it’s not always one hundred percent correct, it is a good starting point on any of my personal investigations on the history of Canada, or when was the 100 year war fought, and why. I also admit that my case is becoming less commonplace now, as the generation who grew up with the internet gets older

I believe that a sort of balance between writing briefly, but well must be achieved on websites. Condensed content does not mean that the text has to be dummied down at all. In fact, I believe that one has to be smarter to write effectively in as few words as possible.

To avoid this possible devolution of our language that this group is wary of, we must learn to show by example that one can still use good language even on the net, even if it takes a little bit longer to obtain.