Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A How much humour is effective in technical documentation?

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...

posted 7y ago by hBy2Py‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T08:03:15Z (about 5 years ago)
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 by user avatar hBy2Py‭ · 2019-12-08T08:03:15Z (about 5 years ago)
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.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-01-23T20:14:01Z (almost 7 years ago)
Original score: 7