May 03, 2005

does it make sense

I had decided that I would not blog about work and also found an anonymous space for my rants...so the point is that I will definitely rant without being under the eyes of the benign and cute ministering angel or the general junta.. albeit anonymously.. buhahahaa !!! ...... but I cannot help but blogging this.. here.. In a meeting where we were reviewing doc contents, it was instructed by the Senior Management again and again to remove noise words... such as Enter the, Specify the, Select the... which is normal for a standard online help. According to the feedback, we should have used neutral sentences.. well I thought that instructions to a user needs to be very implicit when talking to a user... I guess it was a question of rolling the way the ball rolls... and what they said also made sense... so "off with the noise words' head" we went.... As we were trying to form content, Josh, my team mate piped up with an analogy... we have to make a biryani without turmeric, salt, etc. We cannot comprehend documentation without actual instructions for a user..to do something and just provide an explanation for that field. But we got around to preparing this kind of biryani without the main ingredients... nothing is impossible after all. When reviewing the doc suddenly we come across a noise word.. Specify.. all 4 of us who were drilled not to use noise words piped up "no noise words" The gentleman in question pipes back... oh bull... boo boo booo there you are for noise words... this sparked off a humorous discussion on noise words.. go figure.... boo boo boo !!! is that enough noise or what... If we were not to use noise words for the sake of not repeating ourselves... what would a man drowning in the river be instructed to do to avoid shouting HELP HELP HELP... I was imagining a scenario where my purse got stolen and I shout chor chor... what would be the alternative... for this noise word... LOL or for that matter what would be a KNOCK KNOCK joke be like without noise words... Of course.. these thoughts were kept within the conference room ... and we all know that when the time comes ... we will also make a noise about the noise words... LOL Coming to a feature... which said that this was the extension of another feature... Someone... who was pretty tired and a reluctant reviewer comments... This is like : Who is Appaswamy ? Brother of Uppuswamy Related to that we had a session on sentence jokes... here are a couple which I picked and couple which we laughed about .... In an English examination paper: Write a sentence on Rendezvous. I do not know what Rendezvous means so I asked my friend what it meant. ( well that is a sentence isnt it ?? go figure LOLOL) Teacher: Give me a sentence with the word "indisposition" in it. Pupil: I always play center because I like playing in dis position. Teacher: Give me a sentence starting with the letter I. Student: Ok I is . . . . . Teacher: No,no. You do not say I is, you say I am. Student: Ok. I am the ninth letter of the alphabet. Teacher: Ronald, spell 'bet' Ronald: B-e-t-t Teacher: Take off one t. Ronald: Which one? Teacher: Please state the formula for water. Student: H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O. Teacher: Wrong Student: How can it be wrong? Yesterday you said to formula was H to O!