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When can I say "janky" in my on-screen text?

by Tom Johnson on Jul 18, 2008
categories: technical-writing

In the on-screen text in WordPress, on the Write > Page screen, I ran across the following help text.

When you can use the word Janky in your documentation?

Just yesterday my colleague Ben was asking how I felt about the use of contractions in help. Contractions? We've moved far beyond contractions. We're now using terms like janky.

How I would love to publicly insult the applications I document! E.g., Hey, we know this feature is kludgey, but we couldn't find an easy fix. Hang on -- the next release will get better.

About Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson

I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

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