Humor

Do You Suffer from Grammar Obsessive Disorder?

We look at the symptoms of this scourge of professional communicators—and offer help on how you can cope with its virulent manifestations.

The Font Snob

Their logo is COPPERPLATE. We can't shop here.

Ikea Explained

By having consumers perform furniture assembly themselves, Ikea is able to both lower costs and slowly drive their customers insane. To be fair, Ikea assembly instructions are not that bad. They brilliantly only use pictures, which are clearer than text and require no translation. Still, recognizing that some people may still have difficulty understanding them, I offer this handy explanation of some typical Ikea instructions that came with a bookshelf I recently bought.

XML Personas

While looking over the slides for the Tools of Change presentation, I came across this fun presentation(PDF) by Bill Kasdorf to explain different versions of XML for publishing. The graphics are under the fold.

God and the Technical Writer

A short play featuring the God of Software (played by the Product Manager) and the Technical Writer (played by a technical writer).

Error Message Gallery

A collection of humourous error messages and dialogue boxes that you can add to by making your own.

Hidden Settings in Word

If you've been having trouble with Word lately, this could be the reason why!

The Jakob Nielsen Drinking Game

Go to any web or internet related conference. Sneak in lots to drink. Sneak in lots of friends. Attend the obligatory "User-Centered Web Design" keynote session featuring Web Usability Guru(tm) Jakob Nielsen. Follow these rules.

Technical Documentation: How It Really Gets Written

The technical writing process: 1. Ask engineer how the damn thing works. 2. Deafening silence.

The Thirteen Greatest Error Messages of All Time

They're rarely helpful. Actually, they usually add insult to injury. But what would computing be without 'em? Herewith, a tribute to a baker's dozen of the best (or is that worst?).

What is a Technical Writer?

I shall attempt to describe to the audience the essence of the Technical Writer.

Why We Need Technical Communicators

A YouTube video of a terrible (!) presenter discussing the technical intricacies of a product, using the worst possible language.

A Tech Writer Dies and Goes to Heaven

A joke about what technical writers' heaven might be like.

Font Conference

Some people are really creative and can take everyday ordinary things and turn them into something extraordinary. This is certainly the case with Streeter Seidell and Dan Gurewitch, the creators of Font Conference.

What's Your Problem?

This is a piece on pesky colleagues who are curious about others' activities at work place and try to be the good samaritan but land up in need of one.

(e)Xpressive Markup Language?

Conveying the emotional tone of a Web page has, up until now, been impossible with HTML, and the XML standard fails to address this issue. As an interim solution, developers have proposed several new tags to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The Comptoons

HCI Vistas presents cartoons that illustrate the interesting relationship between the human and computer.

Worst Manual Contest: 2004 Winners

The 'winner', a runner-up, and two honorable mentions for the 2004 'worst manual' competition.

Worst Manual Contest: 2005 Winners

The 'winner' for the 2005 'worst manual' competition.

Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

Lists wacky, bizarre, surreal and otherwise strange examples of technical documentation, particularly illustration.

OK/Cancel Comics

Many, many episodes of a comic for user interface designers.

Hexadecimal Color Codes in HTML That Look or Sound Dirty, But Are in Fact Merely Colorful

It's just like how you can make your calculator spell BOOBS, although people inexperienced with HTML probably won't appreciate it.

Engineering Terms in Plain English

Twenty terms from engineering writiting translated into the vernacular.

How to Write Good

Fifty-two humorous rules about how to write well (each of which is broken).

Nine Easy Steps to Longer Sentences

Are you tired of short, direct, and simple sentences that seem to take forever to fill up a page? Are you paid by the word? In either case you can benefit by increasing the number of words in your sentences and the bulk of your writing. And it's easy if you just follow nine simple steps, many of which you may already know and practice.

They Boot Bosses, Don't They?

I got a free pen, a free highlighter, a pad, and this story out of the Internet training course my company sent me to.

Ducks

Some people ask me about the frustrations and difficulties involved in the business of technical documentation. As a reply, I tell them this joke.

Lost in Translation

Here are some signs gleaned from various websites, including www.interweavers.com/brett/humor/signs.world.html and www.engrish.com/, that have amused (and confused) even the most jaded of us.

Kelly's Laws of Technical Writing (retro version)

A reaction to the dysfunction of technical writing in the modern workplace.

A Technical Writer's Chicken Soup Recipe

This is my humble attempt to write a recipe in software manual style. The recipe makes store-bought canned chicken soup -- any brand -- taste almost as good as homemade.

Humor Contest 2004

For this year's humor contest, Intercomasked readers to write instructions for imaginary devices. The contest was inspired by Stanislaw Lem, a writer of science fiction who also published collections of reviews and introductions to books that don't exist.

Black Eyes

Humorous malapropisms taken from various popular locales.

Confessions of a Docoholic

Technical writing sounds like the ideal job.

Spam I Am

Outlaw spam? I think it's best just to ignore it.

The Bumper Book of Technical Boobs

Humorous examples of accidental (and humorous) errors in technical descriptions. Most of the gems on the following pages were, thankfully, picked up at the editing stage. One or two slipped through into printed books; some didnÕt even get as far as first draft stage. We have wondered for a long time about the mentality of the people who write this sort of thing; now you, too, can sit at your desk and try to figure out what these technical authors (yes, they actually get paid for this!) and engineers are on, where they got it from and whether they will give you some.

Quotes About Programming

A collection of humorous quotations about programming that proves geeks have a sense of humor after all, albeit arcane, for example: "A computer without COBOL and FORTRAN is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup or mustard." — John Krueger

PDF Author Creates Spoof of Nielsen's Misguided Alertbox

Doug Alford responds in kind to Jakob Nielsen's 2003 essay 'PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption.'

Oopses

The following was not intended to be funny, but it is nevertheless. These are some examples where text was incorrectly translated or was not localized, which resulted in misrepresentation of the company and the product. Let's laugh and learn from these examples.

Boredom: The Secret of Tech Writing

Of course, it's not 100% all of the time boring. Just some of it, on a fairly regular but not intolerable basis. But boring all the same.

User Instruction Missing

A story about testing the stability of airplane windshields from collisions with birds.

Learning from the "Powers of Ten"

To most designers, the Eames name brings to mind rows and rows of molded plywood chairs and Herman Miller furniture of the 1950s. But the Eameses were more than just designers of furniture; they were masters of exploration and experimentation into the realm of experience.

Worst Manual Contest: 2001 Winners

The winner, four runner-ups, and an honorable mention for the 2001 'worst manual' competition.

Worst Manual Contest: 2002 Winners

The winner, four runner-ups, and an honorable mention for the 2002 'worst manual' competition.

Worst Manual Contest: 2003 Winners

The winner, four runner-ups, and an honorable mention for the 2003 'worst manual' competition.

The Biggest Lies Heard by Technical Writers

This list is the result of a thread started on the Techwr-l listserver group about the biggest lies we, as technical writers, hear on an almost weekly basis.

Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

Welcome to my Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness. On this page, I list wacky, bizarre, surreal and otherwise strange examples of technical documentation, particularly illustration.

Klingon Technical Writers

The top 16 things likely to be overheard if you had Klingon technical writers working on your documentation team.

The Leap from Heck

A technical writer...hey aren't those like the guys who wrote the manual for the Quantum Leap Accelerator?

Project Management Proverbs

Humorous aphorisms about project management.

The Tale of Three Project Managers

Three humorous stories that illuminate common project management problems.

Humor in the Workplace?

Over the years, I've been accused of not taking life seriously enough. Although life certainly is no joke, it's not all Sturm und Drang or Weltschmerz, either. Mostly, I think, it's like Mozart: exhilarating and joyous except when it's not.

E-Mail, Acronyms, and Alphabet Soup

Emoticons have become pretty complex, now including ones like :-# [lips are sealed], :-& [tongue tied], or :-'' [pursing lips].

Humor for the Technical Writing Class

Here are some examples and pointers to humor about resumes, documentation and mistaken English.

Usability Must Die

Usability is a tool that should be in the kit of all software designers/programmers. It only became a profession when people found they could charge £1,000 a day by calling themselves Usability Engineers and pontificate on the mysteries of 'ease of use'.

The Benefits of a Job Well Done

A parable about the lives of a high-tech technical writing team. Ken puts his twenty-five years as a technical writer to good use in this fictional work about four people hired to write manuals for Xoom-tek. In the chapter excerpted, Ken takes a humorous look at RIFs and downsizings.

Amusing Blunders

For fun, Asterisks.com shares some amusing blunders collected by editors.

Low-Level Jobs to Avoid: Technical Writer

Grouping technical writers with grocery stock clerks and temps, this article mocks us all. Seemingly, from the position of someone who's done the job. For example, under 'manager says,' it quotes:

I want those four bullet points on letters of credit to be perfectly clear and concise. Spend a few more hours reworking them until they're exactly right.

Intercom's Annual Humor Contest

The editor of Intercom introduces the magazine's annual humor contest. This year, readers are asked to submit made-up words that relate to some aspect of technical communication.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Techrock

Manley's loving parody of T. S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' touches on the realities of technical communicators on the job.

Made-Up Words, Real-Life Winners

The editor of Intercom presents the winners of Intercom's annual humor contest.

The TC Team: Our Very Own Superheroes

Leavitt imagines how easy writing documentation would be with the help of technical communication superheroes who fix grammar, translate technobabble, and extend deadlines.

Y1K: The Millennial Challenge

Humor about the last time a milennium hadn't been planned for.

A Nose Gesture Interface Device: Extending Virtual Realities

This paper reports on the development of a nose-machine interface device that provides real-time gesture, position, smell and facial expression information. The DATA NOSETM2—Data AtomaTa CORNUCOPIA pNeumatic Olfactory I/O-deviSE Tactile Manipulation—allows novice users without any formal nose training to perform complex interactive tasks.

Tech Writing Folk Songs

The long-awaited summary of Tech Writing Folklore and Minstrelsy!

Tina the Tech Writer

She's the technical writer in Dilbert's engineering department. Tina believes any conversation within hearing distance is intended as an insult to her profession and her gender. She strives to maintain her dignity while surrounded by engineers who don't have a proper respect for her work.

Top 10 New IRB-Required Additions to Consent Forms

A list of the top 10 new IRB-required additions to consent forms.

A Day in the Life

If it's a good day, you arrive at work around seven o'clock, grateful for having missed the morning rush hour. Today's not a good day, so instead you crawl out from under the shakey shelf in your cubicle, glad that neither your cranky, obsolete computer nor the stale glass of Jolt cola fell on you during the night. Don't laugh; it's happened before, and putting yourself back together again cost you an hour of sleep you desperately needed. You smell the stench of cold pizza, and what's really appalling is that you're not sure whether it's coming from your shirt, your breath, or a hidden cache somewhere in the cubicle under piles of documentation someone left you to review. That's not your problem right now.

The MBA Sentence Generator

MBA Writer is a humorous site for automatically generating business-speak. It automatically generate sentences ready for inclusion into your business memos, without all of the thinking!

Driving Over Jakob Nielsen

A web-based game, in which you master the usability issues of driving a Mack truck over well-known usability experts.

User's Guide

Did you know that some people think technical writers make too much money? Discuss it as much as you like, but one thing remains certain: Until engineers can figure out that 'I/O' is 'on,' we writers will continue to pull down the big bucks.

The Inappropriate Posting Scenario

You are in a large lecture hall full of people in your profession. Included in the audience are students, educators, professionals. You cannot make out their faces, but they could reasonably include your employers or potential employers, your coworkers, and the ever-present violently obsessive technical writing groupies. Most of the audience members sit quietly as one member at a time gets up, walks to the podium, and shares information or advice or asks questions. Some of it is rich and detailed, some cursory but helpful, some trivial but relevant in a roundabout way. Somewhere in this stream of information, someone expresses an opinion or gives a piece of advice that you feel obligated to respond to.

There Was Life Before the Computer

A poem about computer-related terminology.

Types of Computer Viruses

A collection of fictitious viruses and their characteristics.

Whoops: Aircraft Maintenance

A list of problems allegedly noted by U. S. Air Force pilots and left for maintenance crews to fix before the next flight, plus the replies from the maintenance crews.

Whoops: Questionable Advice

Questionable warnings and instructions from all over the world.

Whoops: Translation Trouble

Quotations of translated material from all over the world.

How to Thaw a Turkey

I open my usability presentations with this true story: I was given a large, frozen turkey a few years ago. When it came time to prepare the turkey, I placed it on a kitchen counter to let the turkey thaw.

Dilbert

Dilbert, sometimes referred to as a 'patron saint of technical communicators,' represents a sort of workplace humor that often illuminates TC experiences. This website shows the past month's worth of episodes from the daily syndicated cartoon.

The Editor from Hell

This morning I woke up in a cold sweat -- which was odd, because I usually wake up in bed. In my dream, or rather nightmare, I was reviewing a manuscript that was due to be returned to a client that very morning. As I recalled the dream, I realized why I was sweating -- the manuscript had been edited by someone who combined the worst characteristics of every copy editor I'd ever known.

How Come....

How come...everyone still says there is 'an error in the docs!'

How Many Geeks Does It Take?

A dog-ate-my-homework computer failure from the Ray computer logs.

I Punctuate; Therefore, I Am

It is punctuation that mirrors our personality, punctuation that exposes our true spirits, punctuation that reveals the soul. The punctuation that saturates our writing, that is, the punctuation marks we choose to overuse, is the real ink blot test of personality.

New Publications Guidelines

In an effort to improve productivity by reducing the amount of time wasted by writers arguing over various issues from tools to punctuation, the following Guidelines take effect immediately.

You Know You're A Tech Writer When...

This page will show you whether you are a true technical writer.