Campbell Chapter 8
This chapter talks about the final stages of putting together a policy or procedure. These stages involve reviewing the entire document in five areas: verification, validation, editing, proofreading, and approval. This review process is quite important, however time constraints often keep them so brief that mistakes are missed that readers notice immediately. We have all been victim of having to read something that has clearly not been edited or proofread before it was published. I have trouble when I receive a document (such as a course syllabus) that is full of typos and grammatical errors. What it says to me is that the instructor didn’t take the time to clean it up and it really lowers the author’s credibility. One way to help the review process, if time permits, is to have people other than the author go over the document.
posted by Zach @ 12:51 PM
5 Comments:
Like Zach, I have read things that have very obvious mistakes. I've seen mistakes in books, and in one of my classes, there are always typos on our quizzes. I think that people/companies need to take the time to go over documents thoroughly. Obvious spelling and grammatical errors can discredit a writer.
Printing a typo ends up being worse for a company than producing the document a day late. It costs more to reproduce and redistribute a document than it does to have someone properly proof it before it is sent out, and it is less time consuming in the end. Editing/proofing a document is more important than many people realize.
I picked up on validation as a key point in this chapter. I work with a lot of application support people and validating the documentation that goes with the application seems to be one of the biggest hurdles facing a lot of projects. If the steps aren't clear to the user, the application will probably not be used in the manor intended.
I had one professor-written text from a COMS class I took last year. The professor issued a pretty poor document as far as a textbook goes. Since it was was almost all java code, there wasn't much I could complain about as far as typos go. It just lacked organization or structure, and it's readability was quite low. Also, it was quite difficult to find what you're looking for...it just looked as if it were thrown together in one night.
The biggest part of the chapter that jumped out at me was the "Surprise, Surprise!" from page 274. It talks about doing all of this work, handing it to an apporover, and they tell you that it needs to be rewritten. I kind of wonder if we should have kept Dr. Quade more involved during the usability testing project. Would she have wanted us to go in a different direction? Probably not. But, I realize now that keeping the outside people (management, etc.) more up to date on the project can be very important.
Post a Comment
<< Home