Progressive Place

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Too much narrative: Why most of what's written doesn't need to be

Too much narrative: Why most of what's written doesn't need to be.

Most of what's written is narrative. Maybe it's the only chance for many of us to struggle to express ourselves to others, without which we'd forget how.
Example: documenting a systems development project (SDLC). We don't really need to re-express every function of a particular implementation of, say, an open source email program. If it wasn't expressed well when the program was first created, then subsequent tech writers could pull the doc out of an open docs repository, improve it, and check it back in. That's how open source code works: Constantly, collectively, work on and improve an open model, rather than re-writing it over and over again for use within one company.

Would the outcome be good or bad? Fewer jobs for tech writers, or more jobs and better docs? How's it worked out for open source programmers?

Business communication was the first target of this idea, but that version will take longer to prep for publication, and was put aside for now.

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