Musings

Looking For A Few Good Manuscript Readers

Have you ever encountered an instruction manual that was so poorly written that it left you more confused and less knowledgeable than when you started to read it?  I have suffered through this experience many times, mostly with instruction manuals for electronics and compewder stuff.  Frequently I have wondered why this is the case, and reached the conclusion that the reasons may be many, including:

  1. The instruction manuals are written by the creators of the product, for whom communicating in standard English is not a highly developed skill set.  There is a reason why compewder geeks are stereotyped.
  2. The manual writers resent the task of creating an explanatory tutorial for their work, and expect the readers to be less intelligent than they and are thus held in contempt, unworthy of even explaining their work to the end-user.
  3. The manual writers are so familiar with their own product that they can unconsciously fill in any informational voids with their own working knowledge.  I have literally called “Help” lines when I could not understand something, and received a reply, “Oh yeah, I guess that [vital piece of information] really should be in there since the product will not work unless X, Y, or Z is done this way,” an informational nugget absent in the manual.  I do mean literally receiving this response.
  4.  The instruction manual is written by someone who is a competent writer but does not know the subject well enough to explain it, and there is no back half to the information loop whereby a technical expert reviews and corrects any mistakes.

What does this have to do with woodworking?

Well, I will soon be at the point in in writing The Period Finisher’s Manual where I am ready to begin sending out sections for review.  I have the back half of the review covered, with my erudite friends MikeM and LenR volunteering to look at it from a technical/wordsmithing perspective.  But they are highly skilled experienced finishers and are thus not the people to necessarily focus on what is not present in the text or visuals.

What I need is a small cadre of readers, preferably no more than two or three, who are literate but not so experienced in wood finishing that they can fall into the trap of Step #3.  I need to know if the verbiage I am creating is actually comprehensible and useful to the less experienced finisher, such that they can read and understand what I am writing with the result being their ability to integrate what is in the book with what they are doing at the bench.  Getting back to the compewder analogy, I encounter this whenever my webmeister or daughters give me some instruction for my laptop.  I recognize that they are using English words but have no comprehension of what they mean.

These reviewers would not be paid, and their commitment to the project must be such that they will read critically and comment back to me in a timely manner so that I can make revisions as necessary.  Creating a book is a long haul, often tedious and thankless.  All I can offer is my public and private thanks and acknowledgement in the book, along with a couple copies of the book itself once finished, and perhaps a nice gift basket of wood finishing swag from The Barn On White Run. Oh, and a substantial credit in the Bank of Don, previous beneficiaries of which I hope would confirm is not without value.

If this sounds like you, let me know.  If you have my email, use it.  If not, try the Contact function on the web site.  If that is being temperamental leave a Comment to this post, these remain private until I review and post them so you can leave your contact information with confidence that it will remain private.