Rants and Raves

putting words, pictures and people together

I’ve collected here some articles, reviews, and miscellaneous screeds I’ve published over the years in professional publications. “Review and Comment” might be a more dignified title, but one person’s comment is often another person’s rant—especially when the commentator feels as strongly as I do about excellence in technical communication.

Article		Subject
A Curmudgeon’s Guide to Computer Documentation		Is documentation a bad word? It is if you’re the Curmudgeon, a character I invented, who some say bears an amazing resemblance to … me.
Why Manuals Fail		A very brief review of the first edition of Edmond H. Weiss’s How to Write a Usable User Manual.
What Excellence Looks Like		Comments on the magnificent Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte.
Fonts, schmonts		Understanding what really goes on where the eyeballs meet the photons.
Structured Writing, Structured Documentation: What and Why?		A brief comparison of two often-confused concepts.
Clear, Brief and Bold: Will Strunk’s Legacy		A masterpiece of concision so tightly written that you almost don’t need to read past the table of contents.