From the course: Technical Writing: Quick Start Guides

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Address your user directly

Address your user directly

From the course: Technical Writing: Quick Start Guides

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Address your user directly

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- There's an old saying in the technical writing community that goes something like this users never refer to themselves as users. Like lots of old sayings, this one is very wise. Developers may refer to the people who will use their products as users, and the marketing team may call them customers. You may have been referring to future readers of your Quick-Start Guide as users, too, but that's not how they refer to themselves. So when you write your Quick-Start Guide, you'll need to refer to the people who are using it in terms they will recognize and respond to. You want the readers to see themselves in the guide and to recognize it's there to help them. Here are two reliable ways to refer to your users in your guide. Use second person pronouns you, your or yours. For example, instead of writing "The user should click Protected Account to view "all the status information on each registrant." You should use the pronoun you, write this instead. "You should click Protected Account to…

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