The real technology -- behind all our other technologies -- is language. It actually creates the world our consciousness lives in. (Andrei Codrescu)

Me, I have a science fiction writer's conviction that the damn robot is supposed to speak human, not the other way around. (Spider Robinson)

Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation. (William Safire)

Don't include a sentence in documentation if its negation is obviously false. (Bob Martin)

"Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible", she said, "but that alone doesn't make it true." (Franz Kafka)

There is no more need to learn computer terminology to use a computer than there is to learn the names of your digestive enzymes in order to enjoy a good meal. (Michael Rothenberg)

The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity. (Edsger Dijkstra)

There are only two industries that refer to their customers as users. (Edward Tufte)

By three methods we may learn technical writing: First by education, which is noblest; second by methodology, which is easiest; and third by planting your butt in a chair and pecking out the damn document, which is the bitterest. (Andrew Plato)

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust. (Samuel Butler)

In the interests of clarity, it seemed necessary to constantly remind myself to pay not the slightest attention to the elegance of the presentation; I adhered conscientiously to the rule of the brilliant theoretician, Ludwig Boltzmann, to leave elegance to tailors and shoemakers. (Albert Einstein)

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. (Charles Mingus)

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. (Albert Einstein)

Presumably, we're all fully qualified computer nerds here, so we are allowed to use "access" as a verb. Be advised, however, that the practice in common usage drives English-language purists to scowling fidgets. (Erik Strom)

Use the word cybernetics, Norbert, because nobody knows what it means. This will always put you at an advantage in arguments. (Claude Shannon)

I once used the word obsolete in a headline, only to discover that 43 percent of housewives had no idea what it meant. (David Ogilvy)

The problem with allowing the engineers who create a program also write its Help and Tutorials is that you get people who cannot write, writing Help for people who do not need help. (Mark Rector)

Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded. (Plato)

Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more user-friendly. Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, user-friendly on the cover. (Bill Gates)

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. (Niels Bohr)

It's no coincidence that the most popular PC books go by names like "Windows for Dummies". Detroit doesn't sell books like "Oldsmobiles for Idiots" or "A Foul-Up's Guide to Fords". (Patrick L Anderson)

A memorandum isn't written to inform the receiver, but to protect the writer. (Dean Acheson)

Abend: n. [From German guten Abend "good evening" ] A system ABORT deliberately induced (usually on Fridays) to allow the third-shift staff to leave early. (Stan Kelly-Bootle)

User: n. The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot." (Dave Barry)

Documentation: n. The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded, steamed, bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern software or hardware products. (Jargon Files)

Network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections. (Samuel Johnson in 1755)

Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics. (Eric Temple Bell)

Logic: n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. (Ambrose Bierce)

A product manager can be defined as someone who has all of the responsibility and none of the power. (Guy Kawasaki)

Manuals just slow you down and make you feel stupid. The directions are too slow, too detailed, and use too much abstract, arcane or academic language -- like boot up instead of turn on the red switch in the back. (Neil Fiore)

I don't mind that you think slowly but I do mind that you are publishing faster than you think. (Wolfgang Pauli)

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software. (Arthur C Clarke)

Present to inform, not to impress; if you inform, you will impress. (Frederick P Brooks)

This is a vendor product presentation. If the idea of such a presentation offends you, please consider leaving at this time. (Stephen Samson)

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another. (Richard Feynman)

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read. (Winston Churchill)

Voluminous documentation is part of the problem, not part of the solution. (Tom DeMarco)

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it, and above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light. (Joseph Pulitzer)

Documentation is the castor oil of programming. (Gerald Weinberg)

Not all comments are bad. But they are generally deodorant; they cover up mistakes in the code. (Christian Sepulveda)

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we all know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms. (Galen)

Hungarians assume that everything will soon break. And they usually want to fix it themselves. So good Hungarian manuals read more like machine shop specifications than user guides. (János Kosztolányi)

Communication with an engineer is only slightly more difficult than communication with the dead. (Rus Stiles Sr)

How can you be just like a real techie? Frequently use the word "irrelevant", but never spell it correctly. Try "irrelivant", "irelivent", and "irrevelant" to start with, but be sure to develop your own sub-literate variations for extra coolness! (Jeffrey Carl)

"Like all Holmes' reasoning," Dr. Watson says, "the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained." (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Rule 1 of writing software for nontechnical users is this: if they have to read documentation to use it you designed it wrong. (Eric Raymond)

There is nothing in the programming field more despicable than an undocumented program. (Ed Yourdon)

If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong. (Norm Schryer)

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone. (Kong Fu Zi/Confucius)

Dew knot trussed yore spell chequer two fined awl yore mistakes. (Brendan Hills)

The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it. (Benjamin Disraeli)

Every technology really needs to be shipped with a special manual-- not how to use it but why, when and for what. (Alan Kay)

The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end, about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion. (Douglas Hofstadter)

100 pages of comments will not make a poorly written page of code not sück. (Robert Mollitor)

Obviously, comments are not a style at OSF, so trying to decode what (the hell) is going on resembles sifting through the ash at Waco. (Martin Brunecky)

The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. (Francis Bacon)

I'd sit there and first I'd look through the comments, pick through the security holes, and then I'd see what the developer did to fix it because they'd always leave it well commented - thank you very much - and then I'd work back and figure out how I could write exploit code to exploit their vulnerabilities. (Kevin Mitnick)

I've never met a human being who would want to read 17,000 pages of documentation, and if there was, I'd kill him to get him out of the gene pool. (Joseph Costello)

I guess it’s better to have too much information than too little. It makes the manufacturer feel good, keeps writers employed, and makes attorneys work a little harder. Besides, it gives me something to read as I'm eating those chewy white peanuts that came with my new computer. (Dave Glardon)

Documentation is like sex; when it's good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's better than nothing. (Dick Brandon)

Report-writing, like motor-car driving and love-making, is one of those activities which almost every Englishman thinks he can do well without instruction. The results are, of course, usually abominable. (Tom Margerson)

As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless tyrant that mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information superhighway. (Larry Brill)

Here are terms to beware of: fool-proof or idiot-proof (oh, you mean you think your customers are fools or idiots?); user-friendly (which usually means to hold users by the hand and force them to do things one step at a time, in prescribed order, whether they like it or not); and intuitive (which in actuality means so automatic it is not conscious, but those who use the term forget that almost everything we call intuitive, such as walking or using a pencil took years of practice. (Don Norman)

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low-self-esteem books n. Also called books for the baffled. Any book riding on the huge success of DOS for Dummies by Dan Gookin.

My contest for rival titles (UNIX Review, October 1993) invoked:

Visual BASIC for the Blind;
Pacsal for the Dyxlesic;
REXX for Ex-Monarchs;
C++ for the Nonplussed;
dBASE for the Debased;
Quicken for the Dead;
1-2-3 for the Innumerate;
CLU for the Clueless;
and LISP for the Listless.

(Stan Kelly-Bootle)