#Ommwriter tech support how to

The document gets reviewed and returns alongВ withВ the review comments. Usually this relationship occurs between a peer reviewer or an editor and the author of the document. And once they find what they were looking for, they run awayВ fromВ it (really!). UserвЂ™s Guides and Online help, unfortunately, are not very interesting and people only read them to quickly find information which they immediately need. IвЂ™m not talking about a thriller or a science fiction where the audience is glued to the characters and does indeed reads the document from beginning to end. Very few, if any, of your audience will ever read the document fromВ beginningВ to end. Read Closely from Beginning to EndДЄlas, I wish there were audiences that still do that. No wonder why most technical writers skim the introductory paragraphs and addВ instructionsВ at top of the document intended to be used as online-help.

#Ommwriter tech support how to

They only read the document until they figure out how to solve their problem and they stop reading it! This is very commonВ behaviour while using an online-help. They may read a partial (usually top) portion of the document before moving to some other task. Most people donвЂ™t even read the entire document. They onlyВ absorbВ the information chunk that seems important and ignore any other information available in the document. However, people read much faster than that by skimming information chunks. Skim QuicklyДЄn average reading speed can range from 200 to 350 words per minute. The book Technical Communication in the Twenty-First CenturyВ provides seven insights about how a reader might read a document: 1. The insight about how different audiences read documentation allows us to create better, focused, and useful content for our audiences. A strong correlation exists between a writerвЂ™s purpose and use of the document. This purpose gives shapes to their thoughts and allows them to convert theirВ body-lessВ thoughts to words.

Not surprisingly, different people read product documentation in different ways.В But how do they read and why should we care about their reading habits?ДЄ writer writes with a purpose. Reading is a primary form of communication for most people and they have different habits of reading.