I was due to be recorded/interviewed first thing this morning over the phone for a piece a BBC local radio station was going to do about instructions and how get written. I was standing in for the President of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communiators (ISTC).
However, a producer called this morning to tell me they couldn’t stand up the facts that had prompted them to look at this subject (regarding some instructions in a Homebase product), and they’d decided to shelve/postpone the item. I also suspect the Charlie Hebdo killings have (rightly) taken precedence over other stories today.
I’d spoken one of the producers the day before. What they were interested in knowing was, how do instructions get written? She said she wouldn’t know where to start or what to do. We chatted about the technical writing process: how technical communications learn about a product; how they work out what topics need to be written; and how the instructions themselves are organised.
It was nice for them to have contacted the ISTC, and perhaps it will be something they pick up again in the future.
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