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Humor implies an intimacy and casualness that's typically not appropriate for technical communications. Whether it's a tense bug-fix or something-broke-on-me situation like Mark Baker describes, a...
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#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33526 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Humor implies an intimacy and casualness that's typically not appropriate for technical communications. Whether it's a tense bug-fix or something-broke-on-me situation like [Mark Baker describes](https://techcomm.stackexchange.com/a/36), an instructional document being used in a business or professional setting, or whatever else, in most cases it's just _improper_ to presume a particular level of familiarity with a reader. Besides: what if they think the joke is terrible? (Or worse: offensive?) You're far more likely to lose the goodwill of a reader who doesn't like the humor, than you are to gain lots of goodwill from a reader who does. Most of the time, humor just gets in the way.