From the course: Technical Writing: Quick Start Guides

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Identify the overall purpose of the guide by explaining the outcome

Identify the overall purpose of the guide by explaining the outcome

From the course: Technical Writing: Quick Start Guides

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Identify the overall purpose of the guide by explaining the outcome

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- If you're like me, you like to use online recipes instead of recipes from a print cookbook. Why? Because the online recipes usually include a photo of the final product. With a photo to look at, a bumbling cook like me thinks, oh, so that's what it's supposed to look like when I'm done. Having an idea of the final outcome is just as helpful in quick-start guides as it is in recipes. Users of your quick-start guide really want to know what they'll get from reading it. It's your job to make sure they know. Usually, you'll do this by writing some kind of outcome statement at the beginning of the guide, or, if your guide is divided into sections, you'll provide an outcome statement for each major section. Let's look at a few examples. These are also in the handout for this video in the course files. For each example, I've provided both the title of the quick-start guide and an outcome statement. In this first one, you see the guide title is clear but then it is supported with an outcome…

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