Who writes owners manuals?

[rScotty]

Does anyone have a favorite shop manual?

Some people like novels, but at our house the stack of books on the coffee table are likely to be shop manuals.
So naturally that hobby expanded into a small library of mechanical manuals - must be a hundred or more which take up a whole wall of shelves. Some are quite thick & heavy. They're mostly for machines I'll never own but which were interesting.

Some of my personal favorites are manuals with lots of exploded diagrams drawn by good graphic artists. Good pencil and paper artists seem to have a better idea of how to expain things to me than photos can ever do.

Maybe that's why Mechanical Drawing used to be an art form as well as a job skill.

rScotty

 

[SPYDERLK]

Ten years ago, before I retired, I spent quite some time writing detailed instructions on how to download then update the navigation database on the corporate aircraft I was flying. This was to facilitate the ongoing updates every month for the times when I was on holidays, sick leave, etc.

I tested the accuracy and completeness of the instructions, making amendments where necessary, many times until I was satisfied they were accurate, logical, concise and foolproof.

Then I had one of my colleagues attempt the procedure, with me looking over his shoulder.

Well, I was staggered, disappointed, and totally P***ed off when he blew it - mis-read the instructions, got out of sync with them, left vital steps undone, and ended up totally lost. I concluded that either he didn't want to be lumbered with this responsibility in the event of my absence, or that he had an issue with following technical procedures.

So with lawyers writing the manuals for everything these days, and the tendency for folk to ignore them anyway, coupled with the trend towards dumbing-down the human population, I worry!

Nothing is fool proof. Finding a genuine fool is sobering and extremely alarming.

​

 

[2manyrocks]

I had some direct experience writing product safety manuals some years ago. I reviewed and made corrections to the existing safety manuals, Then the company hired a consultant who specialized in them to review my review.

One of the problems is there are ANSI standards for the type of warnings to be given. IMPO, the product safety manuals end up not being readable due to being plastered with all kinds of warning labels.

My L2501 has lots of warning labels all over the loader, and then one of the most prominent locations for a safety warning is taken up by a California mandated proposition 65 warning that use of the product may expose the user to risk of reproductive harm. I live in Tennessee. Never been to California. Don't give a hoot about that stupid prop. 65 warning that seems to be on everything to the point that surely everyone disregards it except for whoever requires it to be on products.

 

[jyoutz]

I’m a technical writer and could write a book on this subject but I'll give you the abridged version of my experience. All the warnings come from the lawyers of course, and those are nonnegotiable. If legal says you have to do something then you have to do it no matter how little sense it may make IRL.

As to consumer manuals in general, most are bad because companies don't want to pay for a writer/editor. They figure anyone can write (how hard could it be?) so when a product ships they usually give that job to a dev volunteer, or maybe even a marketing droid or someone in support. There are various problems with this, but one of the biggest with devs is that they don't know the product. Sure, they know their one little area very well, but the whole thing as an assembled, functioning unit? They're clueless. That's not meant to be a slam because if you design taillights for Chevy why would you know or care about how the transmission works, or how to even drive a car for that matter. The other problem is they universally cannot write. They always think they can, but that goes back to thinking anyone can write. There are college degrees given in the subject for a reason, so this makes as much sense as thinking someone can be an architect simply because they live in a house. The third is companies are lazy and just don't care, and I see this all the time. For example, there's one major tractor company that right now has multiple grammar and punctuation errors in their two page online sales pdf. How many people had to check off on that before it went out? How expensive would it have been to have one of those people be a trained editor who understood the English language? Not very. Another good example is all those manuals for stuff from Harbor Freight. Is it really that hard or expensive to hire someone who's a native English speaker to give those a quick edit/translation? Of course not, but they don't because manuals are an afterthought and nobody cares.

All that is for companies that don't have pro writers on staff. For those that do, there's a whole other assortment of problems that get introduced but I'll leave all that boring stuff for another day.

Not to mention the products from China. Those instructions and manuals are written in Chinglish. Many are comical to read.

 

[workinonit]

No one gets to write power plant instructions, unless they know the equipment and how it is connected to other equipment and the plant operations. -- Did that work for 30 years.

So you're the one.

 

[Willman]

Just like a few of the YT videos I've been watching on replacing the knock sensors on a GM V8. Some of the "mechanics" place the camera so far away from what's happening, you can see what they're doing when. Then through the magic of TV, the thing is back together and I'm sitting there saying; "wait, what happened to those connectors?". I just wasted 10 minutes of my life and have to go look at another video.

What burns my butt on some of these YT “How To” videos is the guy sits there just talking on how he did the fix or repair without showing any video on him doing it

 

[Willman]

I've always thought owners mans were poorly written, for the most part. A well written manual stands out!

I also believe the folks that write the manuals are probably exactly the wrong people. I guess the team that just spent 18 months developing a product is then tasked with writing the manual? because obviously, they know so much about the product.

Because they have lived with this thing forever, they are intimately acquainted with it, know every nook and cranny and, by simple human nature, unconsciously, take lots of stuff for granted.

I suggest they put some bozo like me in a empty room with a table, a screw driver and the product as it would appear on the store shelves. Then record me.

Then find a 9 year old to write the manual!

The reason I bring this up is, yesterday I broke out my new echo trimmer. Actually 9 months old, used twice and put away. I was 99.9% sure the nut holding the blade on was a reverse thread, called a left hand thread, like chrysler's lug nuts (on one side only) in the 60s or 70s?

I grabbed the manual and after 15 minutes i got pissed, tossed the manual and googled it. Yup, reverse thread. The reason I couldn't find anything was the manual was swamped with warnings and safety messages. It's overwhelming, my brain just shuts down, like looking at cereal at the grocery store.

Back to my question......I have a real good idea who writes these manuals, thanks again counselor!

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In my previous working life the ones like myself who designed and built the industrial equipment wrote the hands on assembly & operations manuals, the programmers wrote the computer software operations manuals

 

[Runner]

Some common manual characteristics that cause me problems:
1. "Refill with fresh oil" - but you have to go to a separate section of the manual to see how much.
2. "Tighten to specified torque" - but you not only have to go to a separate section for the torque, but it doesn't identify which bolts the torque value goes to, just gives a table showing sizes and grades of bolts. I know that technically this works, but it still makes me nervous.
After having to search for stuff like this, I came up with my own system of "cheat sheets" that I keep in a binder in the shop for everything I have to work on. Any information I need to access regularly, I write down, such as oil quantity, grade, bolt sizes and torque, air pressures, etc. Only go to the manual for something out of the ordinary.

P.S. "2.1 litres of oil" - really? It has to be 2.1 litres? It couldn't just be something that comes out to 2 quarts? REALLY?

P.P.S My rule of thumb is, never torque any bolt that is less than 1/4 inch, otherwise, even using the official torque #, they always wind up stripped. I also never torque oil pan drain bolts for the same reason (although, so far, I have never stripped one of those, just deathly afraid of doing it). I just make sure to use nothing bigger than a 1/4" drive socket wrench held at the mid-point of the handle

 

[workinonit]

I pulled my torque wrench out to torque something down and it didn't work. I put it back where I found it. I spent years of torqueing bolts for work and always felt like they were too tight or too loose. I don't do it anymore.

 

[EdwardL]

So you're the one.

Nope. I was once a power plant operator and took a job with an engineering firm that had built two steam plant for a utility. It required the firm to write manuals for the operators. The engineers wrote them. they were rejected and several million in payment held back. The firm decided the best way to get paid was to hire plant operators who could write for operators, and a couple of top editors from McGraw-Hill (we were in NY City), put them all together and get it done. -- No one wanted to hire me for anything else after that, so I went on for 30 more years with writing, training, safety, hiring plant operators, etc. You have to be able to read prints, understand instruments, know what operators have to know and think, and then put it into clear words, without any extra crap.