Introduction
Welcome to another fact-packed edition of the Red Pony Express.
In this issue we persuade you of the importance of clear and concise help documentation, take a lighthearted romp through the invigorating realm of gender politics, and finish with a mad dash through the use of the, er, dash.
As always, we hope you enjoy reading.
Andrew Eather
Senior Consultant, Red Pony
Help Documentation - How does this work?
Most of us are familiar with the experience of coming home with some new and exciting gadget – a phone, DVD recorder, or complicated children’s toy perhaps – only to be frustrated by the inadequacy (or even total absence) of the instructions.
While some people will never read instructions unless absolutely forced to, most people are happy to consult the user help when they are doing something for the first time. The problem arises when they either can’t understand the help documentation, or it doesn’t tell them what they want to know.
If your business sells any type of product, whether it’s a physical object such as a board game or something less tangible such as a software application, providing your customers with clear, concise and easily followed help documentation is vital.
You should see the creation of help documentation not as an add-on cost, but as part of your product development budget. If it helps clients to use your product to its full capabilities, good help documentation is a sound investment.
Good help documentation can also serve to:
• differentiate your products from those of your competitors
• help users experience all of the features of the product, making them more likely to buy the next version or recommend it to others
• establish the reputation of your company as one that values its clients.
Help documentation doesn’t have to be complex – take a look at the instructions that came with your most recent Ikea purchase – so long as it assists the end-user achieve their objective.
Sometimes you’ll need to develop different versions for different users. Most printers you buy these days come with a ‘quick start guide’ designed to help users get their new printer set up as quickly as possible. Advanced users can consult the complete manual to explore the product’s features in more detail.
Of course, online video has opened up a range of new opportunities for creating help documentation. Now you can show your users exactly how to use your product in short, easily digested episodes. Also, new technologies and software are making videos cheaper than ever to produce and publish.
Whatever approach you take, investing a little bit of time and money in your end-user help documentation will reward you handsomely in the longer term.
The Dash
You’ll sometimes come across a piece of writing that looks like the literary equivalent of machine-gun fire—a series of thoughts – disconnected ideas – rambling conjectures and assertions—that the writer has plopped down on the page – almost randomly – perhaps to give the impression of urgency and immediacy – but in fact only giving the impression of a disordered mind—now where was I?
This technique always results in readers forgetting the beginning of the sentence before they’ve reached the end. Which is not what you want.
Use dashes sparingly; instead, consider an alternative construction for the sentence, perhaps involving a semicolon.
Still, there is a place for dashes, and you can employ them successfully by remembering a few simple guidelines. First, there are two kinds of dashes:
• the em dash (—), which is mainly used to separate
• the en dash (–), which is mainly used to join.
The em dash (use ctrl + alt + minus on the numeric keypad for PC; use alt + command + minus on the numeric keypad for Mac) should be used to signify a sudden change in the direction of a sentence (e.g. ‘It’s a big building with patients—but that’s not important right now.’). It can also be used to add emphasis in a parenthetical expression (e.g. ‘Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus—better known as the murderous pervert Caligula—was assassinated in 41 AD.’).
There are other situations where an em dash may be appropriate, such as when a sentence requires more than one parenthetical interpolation (e.g. ‘The Stasi were persuasive fellows and they wanted to know everything about me—everything my passport could already have told them (name, rank and serial number)—so they could then forget it and start all over again.’). This way you don’t wind up with lots of brackets within brackets, which is confusing to the reader.
The en dash (use ctrl + minus on the numeric keypad for PC; use command + minus on the numeric keypad for Mac) is much more versatile and useful. Use it to show spans of figures (pages 45–67), time (May–December), or distance (Melbourne–Launceston ferry).
Don’t use it as a substitute for ‘from’ (write ‘his killing spree lasted from 1986 to 2008’ NOT ‘his killing spree lasted from 1986–2008’). And don’t substitute an en dash for ‘between’ (write ‘his victims were aged between 23 and 67’ NOT ‘his victims were aged between 23–67’).
Minding your hises and herses
At the risk of turning the Red Pony Express into a drab tract concerned only with what the governor of California refers to as “der pollydigs”, follow me just this once through the treacherous minefield of gender politics.
Many organisations and government departments have strict policies governing gender-neutral language. If you have them to hand, shut up and follow them. If you are left to your own devices, here are a few strategies you might employ to keep on the right side of the authorities...
Turn everything plural
Where you are faced with a complex sentence featuring an array of shes, hes, hises or herses, you can often get out of jail by turning them into thems and theirses. Witness:
‘An acrobat needs his muscles to be in peak condition if he is to avoid hospitalisation as the result of a miscalculation as he approaches the vaulting horse.’
becomes
‘Acrobats need their muscles to be in peak condition if they are to avoid hospitalisation as the result of a miscalculation as they approach the vaulting horse.’
Just delete it
Sometimes this works. Give it a try and see if it does. It works here:
‘The contractor might submit multiple invoices for the same job, but [he] can’t expect to be paid more than once.’
Turn it into something else
Pronouns are just standing in for nouns anyway, so they won’t take it personally if you substitute them for an article.
'The clumsy assassin dropped his rifle.’
becomes
'The clumsy assassin dropped the rifle.’
Using a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent
This is my favourite. Although it’s ungrammatical, this strategy cuts the Gordian knot with a straightforward solution. It means attaching a plural pronoun to a singular antecedent, but it’s in the service of a higher goal – gender equality and the universal harmony that flows from it.
‘If anyone present has purloined my rutabaga let him speak now or forever hold his peace.’
becomes
‘If anyone present has purloined my rutabaga let them speak now or forever hold their peace.’
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