How to structure the text when describing the steps of a procedure which has simultaneous processes?
I have to further explain my intent here. I'm writing down some procedures in operating manuals and servicing manuals. I mostly use numbered lists and sometimes just bulleted lists. Recently I started to realize that some of the steps that I've written were in fact not ordered steps but parallel processes. My first reaction to correct those problems was to merge such steps into one step and describe the simultaneous character of the processes in the step explanation itself but this solution turned out to create very ugly and long procedure explanations. This problem is best seen in the textual parts of how-to processes in a flowchart's text.
My question is if there are common practices to write parallel processes in a step-by-step procedure. I saw some kind of visual solutions before which combined the use of boxes in a flowchart-like outline but when you already write step explanations for how-to steps of a flowchart this solution doesn't apply.
EDIT
I'm sorry for the late reply.
A simple example would be something like this (this is a manual check procedure for the service technicians, it's not meant for the operators of the machine):
- Turn on the air pipeline input vane
- Check if the indicator arm moves to the set value
These two procedures have to be performed simultaneously. The valve used to turn the input vane and the vane's indicator arm aren't placed in close vicinity (the technician can observe the arm's movement from where they turn the manual valve), so at first we thought of explaining them in two separate steps. We also have accompanying videos for them which use the same text as subtitle.
To solve the visual part of this problem recently I've come to the conclusion to split the video scene in two and show these steps side-by-side whilst displaying the combined text as one big ugly subtitle text underneath of it.
But the textual part still remains to be a problem. If I merge the steps then I would need to combine them with conjunction words or maybe re-structure the following sentences with word groups like "at the same time", "whilst", "during" etc.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/23365. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
I think you need to join them into a single step, or else there is a risk that the user will do the first step without paying attention to the indicator arm, and may thus hold the input vane open too long.
And I presume that there is a third step here, which is to close the input vane when the indicator arm reaches the set value.
You definitely need to join the first two parts of this, and the appropriate conjunction seems to be "until". You might also join the third with "then":
Turn on the air pipeline input vane and keep it open until the indicator arm moves to the set value. Then close the input vane.
Or you can put the close instruction on a separate line:
Turn on the air pipeline input vane and keep it open until the indicator arm moves to the set value. Close the input vane.
Or you can decide that it is implied by "keep open until".
Turn on the air pipeline input vane and keep it open until the indicator arm moves to the set value.
If it is hard to locate the indicator arm, then it makes sense to tell people to locate it before they open the value.
Locate the indicator arm by [how] Turn on the air pipeline input vane and keep it open until the indicator arm moves to the set value.
Since this sounds like a procedure that can affect both worker safety and protection of property, make sure you field test your instructions to make sure they result in correct action with your target audience.
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