Two Lessons, One Comic

Or maybe two half lessons. Here’s the comic:

First lesson: The pronunciation of “nuclear” is undergoing linguistic transition. The dictionaries are even giving both pronunciations. A similar duo that I’d be a bit more dogmatic about is calvary and cavalry. You know the difference, right?

Second lesson: This is an example of sarcasm, which is saying the opposite of what you mean. Sarcasm is a legitimate figure of speech, so only we curmudgeons really care about it.

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

Got the two phobias right:

I don’t usually post comics that contain profanity, but I do like it when someone gets their grammar right…

I got to the third panel and decided to post the comic with a grammar correction, then I got to the fourth panel! At least the monster didn’t say “your so easy.”

I don’t recommend doing this live person-to-person, though.

But it’s funny.

I wonder how he got that ball to perch on that sloping skateboard, though.

—Some of the time, anyway. Tech docs have a reputation for not being read, but that’s because we make the info so clear, people sometimes think they didn’t read it. Details after the comic.

Five things about writing instructions well:

• Number the instructions.
• One instruction per instruction. (Except you can end with “and press Enter” when appropriate.)
• Start with an imperative.
• Tell the result of doing it right.
• Include a picture afterwards if possible. The goal is to make it possible to follow the instructions just by looking at the pictures. Hence the reputation of not being read.