[in regard to software documentation]
>
> You list a number of causes of terrible manuals:
>
> > 1) the product was not adequately spec'ed in the first place
> > 2) the manual designers and editors (not the writers, necessarily) don't
> > have a technical and educational writing background. Being able to use a
> > spell checker should NEVER be the only qualification for a technical
> > writer.
> > 3) the design and testing process takes so many shortcuts that they're
> > designing and fixing featurs even as the shipping containers are beng
> > queued up.
>
> You leave out one seems to me as important as any of the others if not
> moreso -- the people writing the manual know all of it to begin with and
> never test on someone who doesn't. They simply do not have a clue when
> they're not being clear... (to put it mildly).
>
I wasn't going to comment on this thread since writing documentation is
my day job and knowing something about the subject automatically
disqualifies me from commenting. Today, however, I came across a little
quote that might put this topic into perspective:
"Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
when it is bad, it is better than nothing."
-Nick Brandon