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10 commandments of technical writing
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I bought a box of frozen sandwiches today, thinking I might have an easy lunch with the assistance of a modern technological miracle, the microwave. Unfortunately, I ran into a little obstacle, namely, the instructions on the box. That is to say, I could not locate any instructions, on the back, on either end, or on the front of the box of sandwiches. I found pictures of the cooked sandwich, ads for other sandwiches, information on the contents of the sandwich, and the website and address of the company that made the sandwich. But no instructions appeared. Finally I gave up and handed the box over to my hungry hubby, who was waiting for the other half of the sandwich. I was hoping his eyes would prove sharper than mine.
He only held the box at arm's length, craning his neck as far back as possible, cursing. This was the opposite of my procedure, as I had cranked my eyeglasses down my nose and peered over the top, holding the box within an inch of my eyeballs in my vain search for those dratted instructions. After a 15-minute search, accompanied by more loud cursing, my spouse finally asked what the miniscule print on the side of the package said. Aha! The instructions had at last been located.
However, although we both saw the red print reading "Cooking Directions," neither of us could make out the microscopic instructions themselves. We went in search of a microscope or magnifying glass to assist us in our endeavors. Another 15-minutes of cursing followed. Eventually we discovered not just one but two magnifying glasses, which we taped together by the handles, and were thus able to enlarge the print to a size that I could just barely make out the obscure directives, after a fashion.
There seemed to be a drawing made by a clumsy four-year-old showing the sandwich being broken into triangles. But no text accompanied this poor depiction. The words instead referred to placement on a microwave-proof plate, and the number of minutes to cook the food, which, upon closer inspection, only referred me to a chart which I could not find. The sandwich either should or should not be placed in the enclosed sleeve, but I could not make out which condition was appropriate or under what circumstances. It apparently depended on the character of the oven, but the words failed to loom out of the fog tcreated by the background, so I was unable to clarify the situation.
There were four segments of instructions squeezed into that 6-inch long, 1-inch high space, after all, each segment containing no less than 10 lines of miniature text in 2-point font, some in black and some in red, while still other parts were in white upon a red ground,. There was also that peculiar drawing in which there was embedded a dark "m." Or was that the word "hi"? I could not decide and among the four eyeglass lenses I possess, in addition to the two magnifying lenses, nothing could make the particularly bizarre font any clearer. My husband's arm could not hold the package far enough from his eye to make it become clear to his eyesight, either, without at the same time moving the print beyond the point where he could see the print at all. The time seemed to be printed at the very bottom of it all, on the bend of the box, but I could only tell that it was a time because there was a colon in the middle. What the numbers were shall remain an eternal mystery.
I decided, based upon previous experience with sleeves, microwaves, and other sandwiches, to risk putting the sandwich in the sleeve, and put the whole thing not on any plate, but on the turn-table inside the microwave. I then chose a time related to my favorite number, which happens to be three, since I couldn't make head or tails of the artistic presention so thoughtfully provided by artist and/or technical writer. There seemed to be some sort of warning down around the fold of the box, too, preceded by a lively asterix. But since it was apparently printed in half-point font, not to mention being in italics, I could not tell anything beyond the word "warning." "Let's hope this doesn't blow up the microwave," I told the doggies as I pressed the button on the oven.
By this time, I was pretty fed up with the box, the oven, the sandwich, and the whole business, so I gave the whole thing to my husband when the timer went "ding!" and ate cereal, which requires no battle with boxes or instructions. This is not the first time I have had such a less than stellar experience with microwaving frozen food, nor am I the only aging person in the country who has become somewhat exasperated with such an experience.
I once had a friend who was legally blind but who had some peripheral vision who had a device the size of a small kitchen table to enable her to read such devilish directions. She told me about buying a frozen dinner once, spending a whole hour searching all over the box for the instructions, then finally finding them on the thinnest edge in green print on a blue background. Although her combination of magnification and bright light increased the print to the size of my fist, she still couldn't make out a single word. By the that time, the food had all thawed anyway. She threw it in the trash and went to bed without any supper, too upset to eat. Another friend described a similar experience, after which she just shared her cat's canned dinner, since that required neither cooking nor reading of instructions.
Based on our experiences, I provide the following list of Technical Writing Commandments, which apparently the writers of instructions for most handy-dandy aid-to-living device manufacterers follow, for your perusal:
1. Thou shalt never put instructions in any place where a normal, sane person would look for them. Thou shalt always and ever hide them in the least likely spot. If at all possible, put them where there isn't room, preferably where at least one line will be printed on a fold or bend in the container so that it cannot be read at all.
2. Thou shalt write all instructions in the smallest font available, nothing larger than 4-point and preferably smaller. It must always be sans serif as this is the least readable style of type. If old Gothic print becomes available, since it is even less readable, use it.
3. If any of the instructions should be especially important, say, liable to cause serious bodily harm if not read and understood, thou shalt by all means write them in even smaller microscopic print than the rest. Thou shalt also use either italic type or a faint color of ink that most color-blind individuals cannot see, so that the hard-of-seeing shall not be able to make them out at all, even when magnified.
4. Thou shalt use the most obscure, lengthy, and unusual expressions for items and actions that thou canst think of when writing instructions, never using any plain and ordinary words that thy average reader would know without looking in a dictionary or consulting his or her grandchild's slang vocabulary. No typical reader must understand what thou meanest without pondering for at least 20 minutes. To this end, use a thesaurus if thou must, or even invent a word that doesn't exist. Failing that, use a word to mean something it doth not really mean, or use a word in a way that it has never been used before, so that thy reader shall be stymied upon running into it.
5. When packaging includes many colors, thou shalt choose to print thy instructions in one pale color on top of some other pale color, so that even if the clever reader magnifieth thy writing enormously, any disability in sight will be also magnified. In that fashion, thy horridly sinful reader still will be unable to make out what thy instructions sayeth. Thou shalt especially try to use complementary colors, say, orange upon red, or green upon blue, so that the color-blind will not see the print at all. Instead, the print shall blend into the background. This goeth double for anything to do with warnings that might lead to, say, blindness, death, or impalement.
6. If thou shouldst have occasion to write instructions for products that children might be likely to use, thou shouldst make any drawings of hazards appear harmless, clever, and cute, so that children will inevitably misunderstand them and believe that they are being instructed to do these things, rather than being warned against doing them. For example, a choking hazard might show a cute, little bunny with big, Bambi eyes and chubby cheeks, say, two minutes before he expires, rather than with X's for eyes that might inadvertently let the child know that choking is bad and not fun.
7. Thou shouldst assuredly leave out at least one significant step so that failure will be ensured 75% of the time for the technologically challenged. Preferably, thou shouldest leave out the step that will best prevent blindness, death, or impalement.
8. If thou wishest to bedevil the minds of thy readers (and thou dost), put an asterisk next to something in the main text, making it appear that there will be a footnote at the bottom. But under no circumstances must thou include that footnote at the bottom! That asterisk must remain obscure, a mystery never to be explained.
9. Thou must leave off all articles (a, an, the), misspell one or two words, and delete significant word endings so that the meanings of thy phrases may be interpreted in more than one way. In that way, the entire process of following written instructions shall remain enshrouded in mystery forever and ever.
10. In any Spanish-language instructions, thou must use untranslated English for no less than half the said instructions. Preferably thou shouldst use English in the most critical of the warnings so that Spanish-speaking readers will encounter, unforewarned, those hazards which lead to the previously mentioned blindness, death, and impalement.
Since technical writers for frozen food preparation are already following these instructions, we need not worry about them. It's the ones who prepare the instructions for making things out of Lego toys that we have to trouble ourselves over. While no one is going to die from not putting a Lego toy together properly, these toys have the best instructions ever created, followed shortly by programs for Macintosh computers since those are the least popular computers. My children were successfully following both of these before they even knew how to read. Now, why can't we get one or both of these crews of technical writers to tackle the directions for frozen food preparation, filling out our IRS tax returns, and the instructions for filling out those forms for reimbursement for medical claims???
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