Overheard the following conversation (not edited):
"You don't have to fetch the complete child."
"No? But the tree..."
"No no, send me all the children from adoption. I will sort all the children according to the tree."
He who cries the loudest gets the floor.
Proven once more by the Bhajji-Sreesanth affair. Bhajji's team loses the match. Sreesanth walks up to him and says, "Hard luck". Bhajji slaps him. Sreesanth bawls, with TV cameras focussed on him.
And the nation thinks, "Poor boy!"
“Was it very tasty, Father?” asked Cain wide eyed. “Better than even apples and oranges?”
“It was, Son, but at that point of time, I wasn’t really paying attention to the taste.”
“Why not, Father?”
“Because I looked at your mother and, in that single instant, time stood still.”
“Your father,” said Eve ruffling Cain’s hair, “and I looked at each other, reached out, lost ourselves ...”
“....and found you,” finished Adam softly, gathering Abel close.
*************
For, the wise serpent had led us to the greatest gift of all - the gift of that one fated moment in time when everything changed. That single instant when we Know. In that moment we reach out to live, and to die together. And from that death do we create Immortals.
We play God.
If I were a big and famous sportsperson, and called upon to run in the relay of the Olympic torch, would I have said, "No"? "No I won't because my heart bleeds for Tibet"?
No. Not unless I was a Tibetan or a Chinaman.
Why? Because I do not have the locus standi to meddle with the affairs of a sovereign state unless I am a citizen thereof.
If India were to host the Olympics, and someone big refused to be a part of the Olympic torch rally, saying "Free Kashmir", why, I, as an Indian, would tell that person to go to hell. And remain there. For ever.
It was the last day at work (for at least the next 6 months) for a pregnant teammate. It was the completion of 2 years at the job for another, and 6 years of marriage for still another. So we decided to pool in and have a small party. I volunteered to go get the goodies that we had listed after arguing for 20 minutes and repeatedly checking the money-purse.
I saw her when I was signing myself out. She was handing over her Visitor Badge to the Security. When I stepped out, she said, "Excuse me".
I turned, "Yeah?" She didn't look all that okay to me so I frowned.
She asked, "Where's the nearest bus top here?"
"Where do you want to go?", I smiled.
"Majestic."
"Oh, then cross the road and walk about 20 steps in the direction against the traffic. The stop's not marked but there may be a few people standing there."
"Thanks", she said. "Are you an employee here?"
"Yes." By this time, we'd almost reached the parking, so I asked, "You, you'd come for an interview?"
"Yes".
I asked something that I shouldn't have. "So, when are you joining us?"
"No, actually, the HR person told me I got only 19 out of 100 in the test so I cannot join."
I could see that she was trying very hard not to cry. Actually, she was trying very hard to smile. I didn't know what to do, so I smiled awkwardly, and turned to walk towards my bike.
She went out of the gates and I saw her crossing the road. Why is it that we have put up an engineering institute at every crossing, got a thousand students on the rolls, and churned them out without any value add? Where have we gone wrong in our education? Why cannot our graduates be employed?
The Sahitya Akademi, in July this year, advertised a literary translation competition in the leading newspapers of the country. The Akademi is celebrating the 50th year of publishing translations through its journals; hence the competition. Entries were invited - translations from Indian languages into English in the genres of poetry, short fiction and oral literature could compete for the following prizes:
I often hear questions like "What is a user manual" and "How do you write a user manual". This is what prompted me to write this blogpost. In the next few paragraphs, I will describe the steps that go into creating a user manual. At the end of this blogpost, I hope to have answered the questions that I started with.
In the beginning, there was the Word.
There'll be reams of paper to wade through. There will be the software specifications, the software requirements, the user requirements, the notes jotted down by the developers, and sometimes, a user manual of a previous version of the product. It does seem a bit mindboggling at first, but that is exactly what Technical Writing is about – spreading the Word.
Then God said, "Let there be light", and there was light.
We, as technical documenters, introduce a product to a user. So, it is essential that we have a clear understanding of the product that we're documenting. How do we go about it? We read the legacy documents, we play around with the product, we study the domain that the product belongs to. Why is the last so important? Well, if we are documenting something about the GGSN server, for example, it helps to know at least the fundamentals of networking. This is the stage where we get our concepts right, and clear our doubts about the whats and the whys (tackling the hows come later).
And God separated the Light from the Darkness.
Too much of light can be blinding, and things do tend to look better when viewed through filters. So, we parse the information. What we are writing is a user manual. Who is this user? A system administrator? A shopfloor engineer not very familiar with Windows operations? What would such a user use the manual for? Troubleshooting? Operating? Installing? A bit of all three? We analyse our reader's requirements, and create a skeleton for our user manual. We arrive at the broad outlines of the information that will go into the manual, and the organisation of such information.
Then God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind."
Armed with an understanding of the product, and the user for whom we are writing, we now get down to the actual business of writing. And illustrating, if needed.
God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.
The TOC is a broad navigational aid; the indexes and the glossaries are those little extras that render a document that much more user friendly. A highly technical reader does not need definitions but if our intended users cover a broader spectrum, we include a glossary. An index is an absolute essential for any document that has more than one chapter but it does not help much if all the index entries are mirror images of the TOC entries. We keep in mind that a reader turns to an index (or a search) only after failing to find the information in the TOC.
Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image."
We now have a document. But we have not tested it yet. Is it in the "likeness" that we intended it to be? We pass on the document for review – usually the development team will do it but if they are too busy tackling last minute enhance-requests, and fixing those murphys-law-bugs, they may not exactly be disposed to read our document and review it. In such a scenario, it is best that one sits with the document in one hand and the product in the other, and see whether the two match. If it is an installation guide – do the steps described in the document yield exactly the same result that the product is now showing me on the screen? Has the GUI changed in the time that I last saw the product? Is the product now called something else? We check all these and correct our misses. Then, we pass it on to a language editor, get the review comments and incorporate them.
And on the seventh day, He rested.
But before resting, we ensure that we've followed all the version control policies. Then, we can take our team out for lunch.
This is a brief story of the genesis of a user manual. A lot of other stuff keeps happening in the background; stuff that does not appear in this blogpost because I intended to keep this post as brief as I could. Maybe at a later date I will talk about the planning and management activities that go in into the creation of a user manual....Till then, Happy Genesis.
