Not Actually Written By Dummies

February 11, 2009 12:44 PM

I need help writing a detailed technical document in "for dummies" fashion. Is there a "for dummies" style guide as opposed to a style guide for dummies?

We have a battered and tattered set of instructions for performing some major work on one of our critical systems. It has notes in the margins, things to look out for, and stuff we found in testing added to it.

The process went fine in the test system, but fell apart badly when we went to do it in production.

We know how we got there (i.e. what we messed up), and we're correcting it, but before we do this kind of procedure again, I want to re-write the instructions, with the annotations, in the "for dummies" format. I think the little icons (but wait!, techie info, danger!, etc) would be useful in these instructions.

Is there a "for dummies" style manual? My google-fu has failed me. I looked at this question, (plus the other ones that showed up as related) but I wanted to see what else was out there.

posted by lysdexic to writing & language (4 comments total)

I know when I have to do "documentation for dummies" where I work that typically is defined as "include screen shots" and be sure to write things down in step by step bulleted fashion.
Basically, when writing for "dummies" make it as id10t proof as possible.
Good luck
posted by a3matrix at 12:47 PM on February 11

I'm a technical editor, and also the co-author of a long out of print Dummies book.

There is no Dummies style manual. One of the quirks of the technical Dummies line was that the new Dummies author was supposed to suss out the style by osmosis, rather than have it in hand.

MeMail me if you want more info. I think I can dig enough information out of my brain to help, scarred by that particular publishing experience though it was.
posted by catlet at 1:09 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]

No dummies for dummies?

Wow, that sounds...counterintuitive.

I just pulled a random dummies book from our stacks, and looking at the "how to use the book section", I see Tip, Warning, Technical Stuff, and Remember. That seems simple enough, I guess.

This particular document would be probably about 30 pages, depending on how screenshooty I get. I wonder if the icons would be sufficient?
posted by lysdexic at 1:34 PM on February 11

i just got a job that was vacant for about 6 months before they found me (yay!).

the other folks in the dept didn't really know how to do the stuff she did (they were computer stuff, she was phone stuff.)

she made little screenshot videos with audio commentary that showed exactly how to navigate various systems and perform certain complex tasks.

not sure if that will help or not, but if you're looking to save paper space, you could always say "see the video "Doing Thing XYZ" on in the Tutorial for Systems folder" or something like that. might help cut down on screenshots.

good luck! i would love to hear what you end up doing!
posted by sio42 at 2:02 PM on February 11