Tech Writing Tips From the LinuxPlanet Pros

I have written three or four published articles over the years, and without exception, someone challenges either a specific point or possibly even the main intent of the work. I recall one case in which I was writing a short piece about Red Hat's 7.3 Skipjack test software. As many of you know, Red Hat has long been focused primarily on server software, but this version did have some interesting desktop features, so I chose to write my review about the desktop changes. I was very explicit about what I was reviewing and what I was not reviewing, but that did not stop the complaints.

About all that I could do was thank the respondents and reiterate that I did not intend to cover the areas they were discussing, but welcomed their response.

Assuming too much - or anything - is a sure way to either alienate people, show your own ignorance, or even discredit your work. I find that there are times when I did not intend to make assumptions but my background unintentionally caused me to make several assumptions. It takes caution, care, and experience to weed these out of writing.

We are not all there, though, so it is good to get started, be willing to make mistakes, accept criticism, and get better at it. I am certainly still learning!

LOL, I just LOVE when that happens. You write 2000 words of really good stuff, and some grump zeroes on some little mistake and acts like the rest of it doesn't even exist. Or, as you said, they go off on a rant about what you didn't write about. In the olden days you couldn't even say "Red Hat" without stirring up choruses of "apt-get GOOD! rpm BAD!"

Oh well, humans are such funny little twits :)

One thing that's different in the age of the internet is that comments tend to be unnecessarily rude. It's just too easy to write what you're thinking without putting it into the proper context. It might surprise people here, but I've even been known to be unnecessarily harsh. What we need is a system where you have to wait ten minutes before you can approve your comments for posting.

It all depends on whether or not there's a check in hand ... and it clears.