Jayden

Thank you in advace, i’ll appreciate every review about it!

Yes this is me ranting but with the cost of my season ticket going up this year (again), huge sums of money being thrown around by Arabian oil magnates and American insurance salesmen in an attempt to buy the title / Champions League and Sky’s nauseating coverage, it seemed to me that the guys behind this site have got a decent idea.

It’s a campaign to see a salary cap introduced in European football and to be honest, I think it makes some very good points.

The argument is put forward very well, it’s got support from some pretty high-profile corners and it seems to be a campaign that has the game as a whole at heart.

Put simply, there are too many clubs running up ginormous amounts of debts to pay unsustainably high salaries to players whilst at the same time, the big names are able to cream the best of the talent to the detriment of the competition.

The site is Footballers Wages and personally, I agree with the idea of having a salary cap. It works in other sports and not only will it save some clubs from themselves, but it might at least bring footy back to being a contest decided on the pitch, rather than in the boardroom.

Thanks

Bye

The main idea is making the instructions user-friendly. I like the Blackberry instructions linked above, and I’ll try to use this model in my work.

Because of the complex, mongrel nature of English (one reason it’s among the most difficult to learn for non-native speakers–and why spelling is just plain difficult for most people) maybe it’s just impossible to make documents perfectly easy to use, search and organize, given the kinds of English constructions available.

I wonder how tech writing fares in other languages, whether this is an ethnocentric debate that applies only to English.

Do writers and editors have these kinds of debates in Mandarin, German, Hungarian, Finnish, French, Urdu and Italian? Are there any languages so perfectly organized that it’s obvious what voice to use, and users have no confusion when searching?

Organizing the topics around nouns looks promising, and so does eliminating gerunds.

Here’s an attempt to summarize the principles discussed above:

1) You don’t have to use absolutely correct English, but English that works for the purpose
2) You don’t have to make wording consistent for the sake of consistency if it hampers the user/reader
3) Make the instructions or content fit the way people use it (e.g., find out search terms people use and write to fit that)

This humanizes the content and it makes it work best in the users’ hands.

A historical perspective on user-friendliness:
User-friendliness in technical products and their instructions is a seeming innovation that has been around since the dawn of time. It’s also known as “The Golden Rule,” “The Platinum Rule,” “Live and let live,” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The Ten Commandments are written in a fairly user-friendly way, although the “Thou shalt…” form seems archaic when compared with today’s informality. (This is not to say it’s always easy to follow every commandment!)

Now that the Internet has fostered user-generated content and conversations between producer/marketers and users/consumers, it’s easier to ensure people can use the products or services by using their feedback.

This may be the Age of Participation or Age of Conversation, not merely the Information Age. Communication isn’t one-way, or even two-way now, but multi-way. It’s multi-dimensional communication.

Tim Mantylas last blog post..Watch for these upcoming posts!

One more question: to what extend should I use the principle of putting the reader in charge? Do I have to use it when describing all product options? For example, I have a lot of options that begin with “scan”: “Scan boot”, “Scan for spyware” etc. I’ll probably end up using circular descriptions. Should I use passive voice in these cases?

Tom, sorry for bringing my questions onto your blog.