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Help Files: Editing |
Help files need editing on various levels and for different reasons. First is the need to use English (or any other language) correctly. Though grammatical and spelling mistakes don't usually obscure the meaning of the text, they are distracting and reflect badly on the developer's attitude. Such sloppiness in an application's source code would certainly be fatal. H.James Company brings to the task of editing a long history of simply reading, a university education in the arts, and professional, editorial experience with a number of periodical publications. Consistency is another virtue worth maintaining. Well established and successful software companies very deliberately and thoroughly establish naming and stylistic conventions before plunging into a help text. These conventions help the user to find and implement features quickly and they reduce the potential for misunderstanding. H.James Company promises to establish and implement conventions with the mind of a programmer and the tenacity of a bulldog. The primary reason for providing a help file is, of course, to explain the functioning of an application and its features. It should do so efficiently but thoroughly, respecting the user's experience and intelligence without assuming too much. The software developer/programmer is (often) too close to the application to do this well. H.James Company offers the objectivity of a first time user as well as the background assumptions of an experienced user of Windows95 and of a wide variety of major and minor applications. H.James Company would not, normally, consider editing a help file without thoroughly comparing it to the actual application. |
