This week I opened up a Logitech headset at work and pulled out the included quick-start guide. It was one of those that was a single sheet of paper—probably about 24 inches by 18 inches—folded up to fit within the package. The information on the guide was broken into six main sections, only the first two or three of which I was interested in: making sure I would get the thing plugged in and working correctly.

However, the contents of the guide were spread out over the entire front and back side of this large sheet because three languages were included. Being a technical communicator, I couldn’t help critiquing the guide a little bit as I used it. The main stumbling block was that the languages were mixed together: The setup section was given in all three languages, and then the operation section in all three, and so on.

This arrangement slowed me down a little because I had to locate the English for each section I looked at. I thought it would be better if the languages were kept separate. I think most documents do this—you’ll usually see one language first in a booklet, then the next in a new section. I thin this works better because you can go to your preferred language one time and then use the information.

I thought of a couple of projects I work on where we essentially follow this practice: I have created the help in multiple languages, and the developers have coded the help link to call the help in the language in which the user is viewing the application. We save the user the trouble of having to pick out content in the right language before actually being able to digest anything.

The person who put together the headset instructions may have had certain reasons for doing it the way it was done. It certainly looked like it wasn’t put together by someone who does something other than technical communication for a living. However, as a user, my preference for the format would have been to have the languages kept separate somehow, either in separate sections of the document or in separate documents, so that I could pick out the English and ignore or discard the rest. I think this would have improved the accessibility of the information.

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