Posts filed in ‘audience/purpose’
Pomp and Circumstance
<Insert your institute of higher learning here.>
Commencement speakers are honoured and humbled to be here this day. Gathered guests are thanked for their supporting role. The speaker fervently relates the mechanism by which she/he overcame personal obstacles (while you ponder your own not-so-different circumstance). The encouraging family member, insightful teacher, and/or divine being are acknowledged. Family and friends couldn’t be more proud. The day is filled with photos, embraces and unbridled optimism.
All graduations are pretty much the same – cheering sections, flowers, unpredictable weather, caps and gowns.
On this day we repeatedly tell grads to believe they can do anything they set their sights on. But belief is not enough. We must also remind them to have a plan to make it so.
Tech pubs compete
Now that the international technical publications competition has wrapped up it’s time to prepare for the next competition. The reasons to submit a competition entry are numerous but mainly it’s for authors to receive a peer-reviewed evaluation. Teams of evaluators independently complete a multipoint checklist.
Areas covered
- Content and organization—does it cover the main points, meet the purpose?
- Copy editing—is it error-free, informative and appropriate for the audience?
- Graphics—do they illustrate concepts?
- Production—does it project a professional image?
- Visual design—does it appeal, are elements integrated?
Handling flaws
Any weak areas are further evaluated. A major flaw substantially hinders the user, whereas a minor flaw might cause a momentary stumble, but doesn’t slow down the user much.
- Major flaw examples: illogical organization; incomplete or missing content; consistently unclear style; no table of contents, headers, page numbers, or index; inaccurate page numbers in table of contents or index; procedural steps buried in text; a consistent pattern of spelling and grammatical errors; confusing terminology, difficult navigation, poor visual quality.
- Minor flaw examples: a few instances of spelling and grammatical errors, misplaced graphics, inconsistent capitalization, or confusing terminology.
Award levels
- Distinction—a work that is clearly superior in all areas. No major flaws and few, if any, minor flaws. The work applies principles of technical communication in an outstanding way, anticipates and fulfills audience needs.
- Excellence—a work that consistently meets high standards in all areas. Clearly (if slightly imperfectly) demonstrates exceptional understanding of technical communication principles.
- Merit—a work that consistently meets high standards in most areas. Applies technical communication principles in a highly proficient manner.
The two parts of a judging competition are the entries and the judges. Competition participation begins at your local chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.
Saved by the rules, bothered by the exceptions
File this under know your audience. A classmate asked for help to understand an excerpt from the rules of professional conduct.
An Immigration Consultant shall not represent parties with potentially conflicting interests in an immigration matter, save after adequate disclosure to and with the consent of the parties, and shall not act or continue to act in a matter when there is or is likely to be a conflict of interest.
The word save can be used as a verb, noun, preposition, and conjunction. Save used as literary term is out of context when found in policies and procedures writing. Don’t do it. Constructed as such, it’s not immediately evident that an exception follows the rule.
In the context of writing policy you want to deconstruct it something like this.
Rule: An Immigration Consultant shall not represent parties with…
Exception: Only after adequate disclosure to…
February update: The U.S. “brain-dead immigration system” is more reason to come to Canada. Read the article.
Cross-border negotiations — table it
“I bring something to the table!”
This term ‘table’ has been bugging me since moving to Canada. Apparently, here, ‘to table‘ something means to formally propose or offer a topic for discussion. For example, the condo association tabled the discussion on landscaping. After the agenda items were covered they initiated a discussion so residents could gripe about dead shrubbery.
Whoa!
In the US you’d say ‘let’s table it’ to mean postponing any discussion or consideration of a motion or thing.
Knowing this difference is helpful before tabling anything with Americans and Canadians present.
Explicit useless info
Speaking of explicit lyrics, the Stones nail it in Satisfaction when they sing about “…some useless information, Supposed to fire my imagination”.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
That got me thinking about explicit and implicit information. Explicit useless info is the .00 cents in the $389,900.00 house listing. It’s the ‘left’ and ‘right’ identifiers for two-subject captions.
Met the tour guides Ms. Barb (left) and Ms. Jean.
Explicit helpful info is the last exit before toll, last exit before construction, last gas for next 100 miles/km. 
Building credibility
I’m reminded of a conversation with a neighbour who decided to become a corporate trainer. This was in the early days of the web. He was telling me about “HMTL”. Yes, you read it as he said it, H-M-T-L.
Whoa! Do I tell him he meant HTML? Yes, I decided. To protect the reputation of training professionals everywhere, I will tell my neighbour that HTML means hypertext markup language.
His pet-sitting credibility remained intact.
Scanning v reading
I came across a business article that reads in part, “… we will use a link from XI — our [acquired] platform — to our [existing] platform …”.
Hmm? How does the author want us to pronounce the word “XI”? Possible options are:
- Eleven
- Ex-Eye
- Zee
Does pronunciation matter? Perhaps not so much in scanning. But when you’re pitching a product, knowing how it’s pronounced matters big. However, anyone reading the article might find it helpful to know that “XI” refers to, let’s say, the eleventh release.
If your product name matters, then treat it like your own name. Don’t make me guess it wrong.