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Focus on decisions, not tasks

# A quote from Every Page Is Page One that has deeply changed how I approach technical writing: In technical communication, we don’t talk much about decision support; we talk about task support… In many cases, the information people need to complete their tasks is not information on how to operate machines, but information to support their decision making… simply documenting the procedures is never enough… What I am talking about is documenting the context, letting users know what decisions they must make, making them aware of the consequences, and, as far as possible, leading them to resources and references that will assist them in deciding what to do..

In technical communication, we don’t talk much about decision support; we talk about task support… In many cases, the information people need to complete their tasks is not information on how to operate machines, but information to support their decision making… simply documenting the procedures is never enough… What I am talking about is documenting the context, letting users know what decisions they must make, making them aware of the consequences, and, as far as possible, leading them to resources and references that will assist them in deciding what to do.

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