These chapters offered interesting pointers about technical descriptions and instructions. I found the most helpful part of the chapters in Chapter 19, where the reading gave tips on the style you should use when writing technical descriptions.
The reading suggests using plain language for most of the descriptions, but does describe situations in which it’s appropriate to use descriptions that appeal to the senses, etc. This struck me as one of the ways I might differentiate between a beginning audience and a more advanced audience when writing. For example, if I were explaining to a very low-ability, beginner audience, I might thoroughly describe how a specific button actually looks and where exactly it is placed on the screen. If I’m explaining a task in the same software to more advanced users, I might simply name the button as a certain tool (e.g., in Adobe InDesign, the lasso tool vs. the third button from the bottom on the left-hand side).
In terms of treating your audience, I think approaching these kinds of instructions with the assumption that your audience is full of “idiots,” can affect your writing in negative ways. First of all, I think you can unconsciously influence your tone and make your writing sound condescending and offensive. This will turn off a lot of readers and they may not find the help they need. I’ve found that a lot of times, an expert isn’t the best person to write a technical document. Experts often forget that not everyone knows exactly what item x is, or if they do, they may not use the same terms as an expert. If you’re writing about something when you are an expert, I think it’s best to try to think about what you didn’t know until someone told you and make sure to include that in your description/instructions.
Appealing to the Senses
I liked your idea about explaining where a certain tool would be located in Adobe InDesign for beginner users. I've used several software instructions that use small graphics of the tool buttons (like a picture of the little lasso), which helps sometimes, but other times it's nearly impossible to find those same buttons on the computer screen. Take Microsoft Word, for example. They've got 20 tool bars! Nobody wants to waste time searching through every one of those bars to find the icon pictured in the manual. With our upcoming project, I think it would be a good idea to incorporate either screen shots or detailed descriptions to assist the novice users in locating certain software tools.
Whose an idiot???
I think that treating your readers or audience as “idiots” is probably one of the worst things the writer could do. It is hard to find the right medium between over dumbing your instructions and making them too specific. The best thing to do would be to consider what kind of people are going to read your instructions.
I used this example earlier, but if you were putting together instructions on how to produce a nuclear power plant you would know that the people reading them would be mechanically inclined and know the specifics of the industry. In this case you could be as technical and specific as wanted. But if you were making instructions on how to put together a dresser you would have no clue how much experience the reader would have, because tons of different kinds of people could possibly put together a dresser. In this instance, you would probably have to be more detailed about each step and show exactly what is being done to produce the correct product.
Advanced vs Beginner
As has been pointed out to us an innumerable amount of times, audience consideration is paramount. I think that if everyone just keeps an empathetic mind (so to speak) a majority of the issues will be overcome. This, of course, goes both ways-too technical and the document fails, too simple and you offend or waste the time of the readers and the document also fails. Although, your photoshop example brings to mind an interesting question: how does one define "advanced" and "beginner" in terms of a user? The answer is somewhat ambiguous and definitely subjective...hmm
appealing to the senses.
I really liked how you mentioned the part about using words in the instructions that appeal to the senses. This gives people a visual that they can picture, and relate to. I also really like your example about how you would describe something to an advanced audience versus a beginner audience, those were excellent examples and they really helped me to understand what you were saying. The examples go to show just how different a writer could make the instructions based on the type of audience they feel that they are writing for. I hadnt though about this but was glad you mentioned the part about how if the writer feels they are writing to a group of idiot readers it will influence their tone and can make the writing offensive even if the writer was trying not to do so. I thought you had some excellent ideas!