Errors

When you write, are you improving the life of your reader – or at least, improving the reader’s understanding? The people who think that writing is easy have deluded themselves that it’s just a question of bunging some words down on the screen.

Writing is not dedicated to the proposition, “All right, let’s get this over with.” But we are all being bombarded with examples of that perfunctory style of writing.

UPDATE: The problem literally was with the remote system. It broke itself and it fixed itself without my intervention.

The system that I use to display images on this blog has stopped working. I will try to determine why, I will try to fix it… and I will definitely try to find a replacement for it.

When it comes to legal text, the technical writer’s first rule is simple:

Do not change any text that a lawyer wrote.

There are legal reasons why disclaimers, copyright notices, privacy policies, and other examples of fine print were phrased the way they were. Under no circumstances do you “clean them up” after the lawyers are done. No revisions.

Your superpower is communication. Theirs is the law. Law trumps communication.