I don't recall if I've mentioned it here before. One year as I reviewed one of my daughter's reading lists, I noticed that a number of books dear to me in my youth were struck out. I went to the parent meet the teacher event and asked about it. She said that those books had Cliff's Notes. She wanted her students to read books, not summar…
I don't recall if I've mentioned it here before. One year as I reviewed one of my daughter's reading lists, I noticed that a number of books dear to me in my youth were struck out. I went to the parent meet the teacher event and asked about it. She said that those books had Cliff's Notes. She wanted her students to read books, not summaries. Sacrificing good books to achieve that was her reason. What happened to a love for reading?
Since I started doing technical writing in 1993 I've had to shorten paragraphs and use more bullet lists. Half the software management fads like agile and scrum are founded on deprecating documentation because so many can't read a full page and hardly anyone can write.
Years ago, a mentor advised me to put an executive summary at the beginning of my multi-page technical reports because few managers would read the whole thing, even engineering managers. There was some justification for that.
I don't recall if I've mentioned it here before. One year as I reviewed one of my daughter's reading lists, I noticed that a number of books dear to me in my youth were struck out. I went to the parent meet the teacher event and asked about it. She said that those books had Cliff's Notes. She wanted her students to read books, not summaries. Sacrificing good books to achieve that was her reason. What happened to a love for reading?
What happened was shortened attention spans.
Since I started doing technical writing in 1993 I've had to shorten paragraphs and use more bullet lists. Half the software management fads like agile and scrum are founded on deprecating documentation because so many can't read a full page and hardly anyone can write.
I read more than ever.
Years ago, a mentor advised me to put an executive summary at the beginning of my multi-page technical reports because few managers would read the whole thing, even engineering managers. There was some justification for that.
Once I put a line into a document right in the middle of a paragraph:
"when Johnny comes marching home again hurrah hurrah when Johnny comes"
Nobody remarked.
Most managers are too self-important for menial things like details.
You have more nerve than me and/or greater power of prediction.
This was not the regulatory submission I wrote to the FDA