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In terms of the rhetorical factors laid out by Walters and Beck (1992), Word for Dummies generally exhibited a stronger rhetorical effect than did Word User's Guide.
Although both texts fell within the category of user's guide, Word for Dummies invoked much stronger persuasive strategies first for initial purchase (not applicable to Word User's Guide) and then for subsequent use (applicable to both texts). The authors of Word User's Guide developed an ethos of the calm and detached professional, while the author ethos developed in Word for Dummies was a comrade or buddy of the user. This ethos often aligned itself with the plight of the user and against the Word application.
Both texts were highly informative. Word User's Guide, however, placed greater demands on users to assimilate new terms than did Word for Dummies. Both texts had comparable arrangements of content, and similar ratios of average index entries per page.
Situationality is probably the greatest rhetorical difference between these two texts. Word for Dummies developed a high degree of empathy with the user, and downplayed the importance of mastering or even understanding all features of Word. In contrast, Word User's Guide offered no cues to develop any degree of empathy for the user. Nor did it explicitly distinguish what its authors regard as the most important Word features for the reader to learn.
Word for Dummies provided a highly detailed author biography, establishing the author as a highly credible source of information. Other passages in Word for Dummies indicated that the author does not consider it necessary that the reader understand or use all Word features. Word User's Guide provided no author biography. The "cheat sheet" included in Word for Dummies reinforced the high degree of empathy the author exhibited for the reader.
Word User's Guide and Word for Dummies were much more similar cognitively than they were rhetorically. This matches the findings of Walters and Beck (1992) in their analysis of two pairs of primary and secondary software manuals: cognitively the texts were quite similar, but rhetorically the secondary texts were much stronger. In terms of scope and depth of explanation Word User's Guide is much stronger than Word for Dummies.
Can a primary text such as Word User's Guide ever invoke the rhetorical style illustrated in the secondary text Word for Dummies? Possibly; the fact that the text is a primary text offers some unique opportunities and complications.
A primary text could claim a higher degree of accuracy than could a secondary text. Indeed, Word User's Guide contains much more detailed procedural information than does Word for Dummies. No text could claim to have the "inside story" to the extent that a primary text could.
One hurdle primary texts face is the perception among some users that a primary text cannot fully disclose known problems with the subject application as a secondary text can (or even should). For example, a user of Microsoft software once reported to me that she did not think Microsoft manuals could ever "tell the whole truth" about known bugs in Microsoft products, while a secondary manual could. Perhaps some users assume Microsoft would face legal or social liabilities if in its own manuals it admitted bugs existed in its software products. The issue of full disclosure has even become a selling point for some secondary texts. For example, a secondary text entitled Windows 95 Secrets based much of its sales appeal on revealing "secrets" in the Windows 95 operating system that Microsoft would have never revealed in its own manuals. While the legitimacy of such a claim is arguable, the rhetorical value is quite high.
One fruitful way to consider the rhetorical differences between primary and secondary texts such as Word User's Guide and Word for Dummies is in terms of social interaction. Nass (1995), for example, argues that people always seek out social voices in computer interaction and in fact in all interaction with inanimate objects. In Nass' view, people are biologically wired for social interaction and any writer or designer can tap into this tendency. Consider, for example, the tendency of people to yell at their computers (or other tools) even though they would be quite surprised if the computer responded. I argue that authorial and reader roles provide just the cues people seek to bring an element of social interaction to their reading of how-to texts. The two subject texts, Word User's Guide and Word for Dummies, provide strong examples and counter examples for the notion of readers seeking social interaction through the texts. One cannot read Word for Dummies without developing a social image of its author, Dan Gookin (via his authorial presence in the text) and to some extent interacting with Mr. Gookin (or more precisely, with Mr. Gookin's authorial persona or role). This interaction may be pleasant or unpleasant for the reader, but it cannot be avoided except by refusing to read the text at all. Contrast this rich social environment with the relatively sterile (but cognitively richer) Word User's Guide. While one is more likely to find more precise information in Word User's Guide, one will not find a single overt cue to social interaction with an authorial presence.
The presence of a strong authorial voice within a how-to text develops what can be called a sense of "otherness" in the text. In how-to texts for software applications especially, this otherness can be pronounced. In a sense the Word User's Guide is really an extension of Word itself. Its cover design promotes the text's connection to Word and downplays its externalness as a separate text. The text's lack of authorial voice also diminishes its separateness from Word. Above all the fact that Word User's Guide is published by Microsoft and included with the Word application diminishes the text's sense of otherness. When a Word user comes to Word User's Guide with a problem to solve, the user is in a sense still dealing with Word, which was the source of the problem to begin with.
Word for Dummies on the other hand, is able to develop a sense of otherness to a high degree. Its very strong authorial voice stands apart from (and frequently in criticism of) the Word application. This gives the reader a third party of sorts (which is by no means neutral) to consult when help is needed. Word for Dummies is not so much an arbitrator between the reader and Word, but an advocate for the reader.
Related to the notion of otherness is research carried out by Nass and Steuer (1993). In experiments in social interaction, Nass and Steuer found that when a social actor is played by an inanimate object such as a computer, self-referential messages (messages in which a source describes itself) are viewed by receivers as less accurate and less objective than are other-referential messages that make claims about third parties. For example, self-praise from a computer was seen as less reliable than praise by one computer about another computer. Nass and Steuer found that despite the generally accepted agreement that adults do not confuse interaction with tools such as computers with social interaction with other people, adults tend to apply the same social rules of interaction to both situations anyway. I argue that primarily because Word User's Guide is a primary text and lacks a strong authorial voice, it conveys self-referential messages to the reader. Word for Dummies, on the other hand, is clearly an other-referential source of fact and commentary. Word for Dummies works rhetorically because it has a high degree of otherness.
A sense of otherness also gets the author "off the hook" with the reader in some circumstances. For example, I again refer to the passages described in Chapter III from the two texts about Word's Mail Merge feature. The author of Word for Dummies freely criticizes the Mail Merge feature as too complex and difficult to use. If the user is unable to complete his Mail Merge task even after reading the Mail Merge passage in Word for Dummies, then the reader might just as likely blame the Word application and not Word for Dummies. After all, the author of Word for Dummies disclosed up front that Mail Merge is very difficult.
Such a disclosure in Word User's Guide, however, would seem apologetic. This is so because of the lack of otherness in Word User's Guide. As an extension of the Word application, Word User's Guide cannot very well criticize itself and still remain credible. One would not be surprised to discover that much of the user criticism for the Word application is aimed at Word User's Guide instead.
One could produce a primary how-to text with strong author and reader roles and a high degree of otherness. To my knowledge, this has never been attempted in a mainstream software application. Such a text would have to be visually and stylistically quite different from the subject software. The rhetorical purposes of the author would benefit from a strong and overt authorial presence in the text. This authorial presence might correspond to a real, living author or it might be a fictitious author. Creating a fictitious persona to represent a unique point of view is not unprecedented.
Consider for example, the rhetorical roles played by Peter Norton and Mavis Beacon. Peter Norton is a real person who is presented as the developer of several software utilities such as Norton Utilities and The Norton Desktop for Windows. If the authorial persona developed in the software manual for Peter Norton's products was that of Peter Norton, that primary text could develop very interesting rhetorical strengths. It would still, however, face the problems of lack of honest self-disclosure discussed above.
The case of Mavis Beacon is even more interesting. Mavis Beacon is known in the context of a popular line of software that teaches typing skills. The persona of Mavis Beacon permeates the software: her image appears in its marketing material and in the software application itself. Mavis Beacon is however, a fictitious creation (Macklin, 1995). The authors of the primary text for the software application Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing could apply the same strong persona in the text as appears in the software application.
As alluded to above, the issue of otherness has already appeared in some software applications as a rhetorical device. As more documentation moves from print into the online medium, technical communicators have a unique opportunity to transform user assistance tools such as help systems into overtly separate rhetorical personas. Such personas need not be highly anthropomorphic, as Nass and Steuer (1993) discovered. These user assistance tools or agents could offer the author a voice separate from the subject software. Because this persona is controlled by software, it could even dynamically respond to user queries and situations-just as one would expect from a living source of information and commentary. The most successful implementations of active, dynamic agents or authorial personas in software will be informed by rhetoric and literary analysis.