5.8: How-To Guide

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How-To Guides can be found anywhere, but we typically receive them with packaging. Sometimes they are well-written, and the reader doesn’t question how to attach THING A TO THING Z. But if they are off in their wording, or the pictures aren’t clear, we end up in frustration with an item that doesn’t function.

What are the parts of a well-done How-To Guide?

Introduction
Materials Needed
Steps

For a document\(^{115}\) to be efficient in this way, it must be easily understood by the intended audience. It is important to use simple sentences, words, and structure so that all that view the document can comprehend it. A document that is hard to understand is not usable or effective, since the audience will be unable to properly understand the document. Highly usable writing should help readers quickly locate, understand, and use the information to complete their task(s).

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How To Be A Nerd\(^{116}\)

INTRO:

Whether you are already a nerd or want to embrace your inner nerd more, these instructions will aid you in either quest to up your nerd game or at least jumpstart it.

MATERIALS NEEDED:

Fake glasses with thick rims, if you don’t already wear glasses or wear contacts
A lot of books about philosophy or history or language, so stick with nonfiction
Solitude
A collection of music, on vinyl or digital, that no one has ever heard of

STEPS:

Wear fake glasses, if you don’t already wear “real” ones.
1. If you actually have to wear contacts or glasses already, you should dispose of them and only wear fake ones. Buy many different kinds, but remember that the bigger they are, the better. And the blacker, the better as well – red frames are fairly geeky, but black says, “I’m serious about these fake frames, now leave me alone so I can do my calculus homework.”
2. Start reading up on as much factual information as possible.
  1. Bonus for connecting philosophy and history and language.
  2. Double bonus if you bite on your fake glasses while looking off into space when thinking really hard about what you just read.
3. Start writing or blogging about what you are reading.
  1. Bonus for using Twitter or Reddit to pontificate.
4. Read the dictionary more often than you used to so you truly understand words like “pontificate.”
5. Begin to worry less about hygiene and appearance.
  1. Doing any sort of hair maintenance is forbidden, but one should consider messing it up when they are talking to people. That’s how Einstein’s got that fuzzy & frizzy white-puff-ball-look; only nerds know that.
6. Eat for those brain cells.
  1. Your brain survives off of carbs. This is fact. So, to nourish the body is to nourish the intellectual inside of you.
7. Live mostly in solitude and be a secretive hermit.
  1. When in class, whether you’re writing a note or texting or taking a test, make sure to hunch over like it’s a secret code you are jotting down. Secretive people, the “quiet ones,” are the ones people point to as total nerds.

\(^{115}\)"Professional and Technical Writing/Rhetoric." Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. 6 Apr 2012, 12:26 UTC. 24 Feb 2021, 21:45 <https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Professional_and_Technical_Writing/Rhetoric&oldid=2302407>.

\(^{116}\)Example created by Sybil Priebe, licensed CC-BY-NC-SA.