Wednesday, December 07, 2005
When more is better
I constantly talk about writing tightly and streamlining documentation. All this means is removing any excess words or rewriting a sentence, paragraph, section, or chapter so that it’s shorter while still making sense.
Sometimes, though, you need to use a few more words. Take, for example, one of the projects I’m currently working on. It’s an update to a software user guide. When I took over the project, the draft of the manual was 917 pages long – I trimmed nearly 550 pages out of it.
In some places, however, I’ve had to expand on what’s been written. Such as? Where it said:
Sometimes, though, you need to use a few more words. Take, for example, one of the projects I’m currently working on. It’s an update to a software user guide. When I took over the project, the draft of the manual was 917 pages long – I trimmed nearly 550 pages out of it.
In some places, however, I’ve had to expand on what’s been written. Such as? Where it said:
… based on application statusI changed it to:
… based on the status of the applicationThe revision is slightly longer, but it makes more sense and sounds more natural. It just goes to show you that sometime more is what’s needed when writing.
