Index

Bitzer: The Rhetorical Situation

http://www.samford.edu/Rhetorical_Situation_Bitzer.pdf

Instructions

(overheads from the lectures: in case it all went by you too quickly...)

The Parts of Instructions

• Stages and Steps
• One action per step
• System Reactions

Warnings, Cautions, and Notes

• How to write
• The differences
• Visual guidelines
• Plus a powerpoint that covers most of the above points about warnings, cautions, and notes

Usability Testing

• Exploratory, Assessment, and Validation
• Users vs Cost on Usability Testing

Avoiding the Passive Voice when Writing Instructions

• Using the active voice rather than the passive voice when writing instructions
• Why the passive voice is lousy journalism

Burping a Baby

• Bad layout
• Good layout