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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 (almost 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 (almost 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