#notes/content-management #notes/writing

Dysfunctional Documents : A 12-Step Recovery Program for User Documentation

by Kurt Ament

Summary

This hands-on guide shows you how to use levels of edit to turn dysfunctional documents into healthy documents. It provides a flexible 12-step process to diagnose problems, develop treatments, and prevent relapses. And it explains how to create, maintain, enforce, and even automate consensual writing guidelines to keep your documents healthy. Each step identifies the roles of writers, editors, and managers. You can customize the process, as needed. Kurt Ament is a technical editor and indexer with extensive experience helping leading companies in science and industry such as European XFEL, Hewlett-Packard, Symantex, and Xerox. He is the author of Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation and Indexing: A Nuts-and-Bolts Guide for Technical Writers. www.levels-of-edit.com

My review

Notes while reading

12 step doc program

• obviously written for teams with more than one writer or with writers and editors and managers who all care about the writing
• I was still able to take some information to apply to my situation and laid out a plan to review the docs for local/global issues and update the style guide
• some insight into how I can improve my processes to be more collaborative (I was the main writer for 5 or so years, but now new hires are starting to contribute more)
• I could write a book, after reading I felt more inspired to outline a potential tome about my experiences and recommendations from being the sole writer on a team
• reflection on how the book was applied to come.

Quotes