Comments on: Could Technical Communication Be Entertaining?

By: Margaret

Margaret — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:00:00 +0000

The series of English text books I used in grade school was full of cartoons to illustrate some of the quirkiness of the language and its rules. One was an immigrant explaining to the police why he killed his English teacher: “He say mouse, I say mouses. He say, no, mouse, mice. I say house, hice. He say, no, house, houses. He say goose, I say gooses. He say, no, goose, geese. He say moose, I say meese. He say, no, moose, moose! So I strangled him with my plural handses!” This was followed with two pages of fill-in sentences containing blanks for the appropriate plurals. I still remember that and several other cartoons from those textbooks.

I think that if we can incorporate humor in the examples and the illustrations, we can convey difficult concepts or warnings in an unforgettable manner and make the docs both more useful and better appreciated. A perhaps difficult challenge to add to what we already juggle, but definitely worth if we can pull it off!

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:53:03 +0000

To me, yes. To the people with whom I work, no. Sigh.

By: Philip

Philip — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:46:57 +0000

Hi,

I’ve found that technical information should be entertaining, especially documentation intended for end-users. I usually reserve the entertainment for the examples, though. As entertainment, I usually try to come up with situations that would never occur for real, but most users do think about. For example, for a recruitment solution, recruiters had to provide a reason when rejecting a candidate. In the example on the use of rejection reasons, I used the bad smell of the candidate’s breath as a reason.

In the feedback I get, these examples are usually greatly appreciated and help the users to remember the documentation better.