The Fourth Rule: Complete

I don’t have anything (at the moment) from the outside world to illustrate this rule, but I want to make my series of posts about the five gold rules of expository writing, um, complete. Rule 1, rule 2 and again, rule 3, rule 5.

Making a document complete is tricky. And completeness has two parts, too.

First, you must meet requirements. Requirements are things imposed by something or someone outside the document. Requirements include style guides that you have to conform to, for example. Certain content might be required, such as a table of changes, table of contents, a version number, and a page of sign-offs.

The other area of completeness has to do with the content. Suppose you write instructions about how to make coffee. Don’t forget anything! Mention putting the grounds in, how to measure the water, and so on. Did you mention that the device needs to be plugged in? Whenever you write instructions, test them. Inexperienced users are excellent finders of things you assumed didn’t need to be mentioned.

I read a story once that the writer decided was a holy grail story, which, he said, always end up killing the writer as soon as they finish writing the story. So he left the last word off the last sentence in the