Different Between User Manual And User Guide
Sep 24, 2006 user guide: (from wikipedia), also commonly known as a manual, is a technical communication document intended to give assistance to people using a particular system. It is written by a technical writer. User guides are most commonly associated with. Differences between Training guide vs User's Guide: From: Daniel Ng. Previous by Author: Inserting Excel Spreadsheet Into Word Document? Next by Author: Use of first, second, and third person in technical writing? Previous by Thread: Re: Differences between Training guide vs User's Guide. Lenovo User Guide TAB E8 / 8 (Lenovo TB 8304F/TB 8304F1) (TB 8304F, Type ZA3L Ug En 20180611.
Let’s say you’re setting up a new Tech Docs Dept. You need to create new guidelines, style guides and naming conventions. Should you call the user ‘documents’ User Guides or User Manuals? Which one is Right?
I was asked this question by a colleague in India who is setting up a Technical Publishing Dept in Bangalore. He wants to go with user guide—me too, actually.
- When I worked in the UK, it was (mostly) referred to as a User Manual.
- Whereas in the US, it was a User Guide. I think the Americans (and me!) like things to be short and to the point. Guide is just that little bit quicker to write, especially when you’re creating MS Word templates.
Saying that, there is no right and wrong, but I did a little fact finding first.
Phablet has adopted a frame made of metal, and the back-coated glass body made curved as a replacement back cover skin bertexture previously owned Galaxy Note 4. Later to be weighed 171 grams, which is classified as very light considering its screen size is large enough.and one of them was Ram LPDDR4 technology with a capacity of 4 GB, combined with a 64-Bit processor the latest generation of Samsung Exynos 7420.Samsung released in two internal memory of 32 GB, 64 GB. Samsung galaxy 2 user manual. Not only that, this phablet has a thinner design premises ketebalana 7.6 mm and the ratio of body dimensions (153.2 x 76.1 x 7.6 mm). But both variants tersbut back does not include an external memory slot, the same as it did on the Samsung Galaxy S6.
What Google says about User Guides
I searched Google and came up with these results.
- Dec 17, 2015 User guide: User guide is the document written to provide assistance to the one about the ways to use a particular system. User guides are mostly related with electronic goods, computer hardware and software. User manual: It is a user’s guide especially made to provide the instructions to the users about the ways to use.
- Aug 24, 2011 What’s the difference between an Operations Manual and a Procedures Guide? At first glance, it’s easy to see the confusion as both contain procedures that need to be followed. However, if we look at them a little more closely, we can where and how they differ. Operations Manuals.
- 15,600,000 for “user guide”
- 10,700,000 for “user manual”
- 5,210,000 for “user’s guide”
What surprised me here was that User’s Guide was so widely used. I’ve always found this a bit annoying. I just don’t like apostrophes, I guess.
Top 5 Most Popular User Guides
A quick check on the most popular user guides showed the following. Not what I expected.
- Google Earth User Guide – http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/
- iPhone User s Guide – http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iphone_user_guide.pdf
- Patron User Guide – www.ebrary.com/corp/…/en/User_Guide/ebrary_Patron_User_Guide.pdf
- Adobe Reader Help – www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/acrruserguide.pdf
- User Guide Tutorial – www.klariti.com/technical…/User-Guides-Tutorial.shtml
IBM Technical Documents
Next, I checked IBM and Microsoft to see what term they used.
- 15,324 for user guide
- 1,047 for user manual
So, they prefer user guide. Though, you’d think they’d make this mandatory. Of course, it’s not easy when you have offices in every corner of the world, so let’s cut them some slack.
Microsoft prefers User Guides too
The folks are Redmond were more consistent with
- 1.8 million for User Guides and only
- 73k for User Manuals
And, to be fair, many of the user manuals were actually guides when I checked. Someone check that search engine!
Handbook Vs Manual Vs Guide
Is Apple different?
Yes, of course.
Apple prefers the term User’s Guide. Like I said, I never bought into this. I prefer short, snappy titles. We don’t call them System Administrator’s Guide, do we?
Well, of course, some do.
7 Things to consider when naming your documents
- Avoid obscure or unique terms for your documents. Use industry standard terminology.
- Ask your target audience what they expect.
- Create a Style Guide or adopt one, e.g. the Microsoft or IBM style guide.
- Develop a naming convention, e.g. a structure approach so that all documents are named, filed, and indexed correctly.
- Develop a numbering convention. Show people how to number documents, for example, when to go from 1.1 to 1.2 and when to go from 1.2 to 2.0.
- Be consistent.
- Be patient when they get it wrong.
My career really began to take off when I saw myself as an ‘enabler’ rather than a writer. My identity of who I was changed from a guy who cranked out docs to someone who helps others get their projects done.
People want to learn, do your best to help them get there.
What do you think? What’s the most practical way to name documents and setup a new Technical Writing Dept?