Tech Writing and Constitutions

Lady Liberty tries to assemble something from the instructions:

If you've ever bought toys for a kid or some of that inexpensive pressed-wood furniture, you know exactly what the problem is with "some assembly required" goods. It's not that it's safer to ship delicate parts and pieces unassembled in in their own protective styrofoam cocoons. It's not that bookshelves take up far less room in the box when the component boards can all lay flat against one another. No, the problem typically lies with the instructions intended to help you through that "some assembly" that's required of you.

I'm not a stupid woman. I can handle simple tools such as hammers and screwdrivers with ease. I think I speak and understand the English language with some fluency. But when I see a sheet of instructions flutter out of a box of whatever it is I've purchased, I positively cringe. In far too many of my own experiences, the instructions appear to be put together by someone for whom English is not a first language and not a particularly fluent second language, either. And the translations all too often strike me as having been written by engineers in the first place. In other words, they're hopelessly — needlessly! — complicated, and the confusion is only multiplied when there's some question as to the sensibility of the words themselves.

I'm sure almost all of us have had similar experiences! In fact, some of us even cause 'em

Back at the office, I stared at an instruction sheet the manufacturer had kindly blown up to poster size. I caught glimpses of "insert anchor post (part 19) firm into base taking care to be frontward facing (part 2) until snap together is solid (caution to be careful post does not break)" and "refer fig. 17a on reverse" and I shuddered. Why does something that could be so simple have to be made so needlessly complex? Hours could be saved; frustration could be minimized. And if the instructions were simple and easily understood, the product would almost certainly work as advertised the first time you finish building it.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least that many of these assembly instructions are written by exactly the same kind of people who author legislation or government regulations. By trying to address specifically every possible contingency, the verbiage is almost always overly complex. Debate and compromise doesn't lead to consensus but rather to added layers of nuance (. . .not permitted under statute except when capitulated under conditions as described in part 17, paragraph 4 and within the parameters further defined under the itemizations of attachment D which is in effect for the first 120 days of the transition to . . .)

Sometimes, it's just bad writing. Sometimes it's written that way because the company is trying to cover off all sorts of issues in the shortest possible way. Sometimes, they're trying desperately to hide something (like the product not actually working the way it's supposed to).