| Authors: | Marcia Riefer Johnston |
|---|---|
| Time: | |
| Session: | http://docs.writethedocs.org/en/2013/conference/talks.html#marcia-riefer-johnston |
| Link: | @MarciaRJohnston / http://howtowriteeverything.com/ |
So what does “concise” mean? Concise does not mean “short”. Concise means minimal: just as long as your readers need, and no longer. And “minimal” does not mean “robospeak”; you don’t say “push button”, you say “push the button”. Minimal does not mean dropping articles. Minimal doesn’t mean content should be gutted for mobile. People read everything on their mobile devices.
Minimal means enough to meet your audiences’ needs, and enough to accomplish your purposes. No more and no less. Conciseness makes more business sense than ever: you’re dealing with small screens, translation costs, and readability matters. Readability is usability for your documentation. Have empathy for your users: don’t make them read more than they have to.
How much can a word cost? You can almost always eliminate a “be” verb.
"You may be needing a loan."
"You may need a loan."
If you pay $0.25 per word and eliminate one word from 10,000 sentences that are translated into 25 languages, that’s about $62,500 in translation cost savings.
Even if you’re not translating, and no matter what screen size, dump words you don’t need.
Dump these words (unless you need them):
The fix for these sort of issues isn’t always self evident. You have to think. These are tip offs that should trigger thinking about what will work for the reader.
You can’t always fix product problems with concise documentation: if you’re having trouble saying it concisely, maybe the product or code needs to be revisited.