Back in the day, I’d buy all sorts of magazines and service manuals, underline things, copy them into notebooks, and go “uh-huh”
—feeling like I understood, or maybe I didn’t. . . .
With limited experience, my imagination doesn’t kick in, which is part of it, but since manuals consider various possibilities for any given topic, there’s not much to be done about that.
But when you broaden the scope of explanation, doesn’t it end up being harder to understand? . . . .
It’s a dilemma. . . . Analogy is key (*’ω’*)
Strangely, in recent years it seems like everything demands “right or wrong.”
Let me use a catcher’s mitt or darts as an analogy.
If a strike barely grazes the edge of the mitt or a dart lands on the edge of the board, is that right or wrong?
What’s correct today often becomes wrong five years from now. It won’t be way off, but . . .
I still come across service manuals and maintenance books and read them sometimes.
I bet everyone feels this way, but don’t you sometimes find that “the key points and the crux don’t come into focus”?
You can sense the flow of the work overall, but then a part is “okay, it’s out” “okay, it’s replaced” “okay, it’s adjusted” and it’s done in a flash, all “let’s do a thorough job” style. . . .
What are you trying to tell me? The overview?
There’s a trend of not showing the heavy-lifting work or spots.
For example, pressing parts in and out is quietly difficult.
If you just need to replace it and have it work, you can yank it out carelessly and tap it with a box to finish the swap.
But if you think the work through further, the question becomes: how do you remove and install it while putting as little stress as possible on the main body?
Whether this mindset is necessary depends on who you’re dealing with (your customer base).
Conversely, if fast, cheap, and good are the three pillars being prioritized, then the kind of thinking I just described becomes a liability, and vice versa.
Getting back to the point, this kind of thinking changes how readers interpret things.
I sometimes wonder if there’s room for a less cautious approach in how things are written. After all, nobody’s going to hold you accountable. . . .
