Tech Writing for Dummies

Everyone who's ever written instructions knows it's not as easy as it sounds. It's like that exercise you may have done in grade school where you write instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then the teacher takes your instructions and shows how they actually tell you to spread the peanut butter on the bread--before you take the bread out of the bag. When you know what you're doing, it can be easy to miss a step--which is why IT folks just love to give their directions to the new guy and then stand behind him with a clipboard. There's no better way to catch your mistakes.

Of course in a case like this, that's not the strategy I'd employ. The state of Tennessee apparently had a manual for lethal injection that was the front runner for "worst instruction manual ever." Tennessee's governor has been forced to pull the offending instructions and stay executions while they're rewritten.

Tennessee's rescinded manual appeared to confuse lethal injection with electrocution. For example, it called for an inmate's head to be shaved, and for officials to have a fire extinguisher, electrode gel, an emergency generator and an electrician present.

Let that be a lesson to you, kids. Copying and pasting can save you time, but that last edit is of vital importance.

We've all heard that careless talk costs lives, but apparently now what we said while assembling that furniture from Ikea is actually true. Badly written instructions really are cruel and unusual punishment.