Dan Marcel wrote:

>And (as most anyone working in CRM can attest to) any report written for
>a federal or state government agency is subjected to a process guaranteed
>to remove any trace of readability or user-friendliness.  After ten years
>writing reports for a state DOT, I would imagine that it would become
>nearly impossible to turn out legible prose of any sort.

Amen, Dan.

I recently submitted a report to a federal agency that contained a table
with the National Register criteria. Such tables are boring, so I used the
pointing finger dingbat fromt he Zapf Dingbats font. The Air Force
archaeologist was offended and demanded that the fingers be removed. Horror
of horrors! Gadzooks! Indication that a human being had been involved in
writing the report!

On another occasion, a staff member of the SHPO complained that  they
couldn't get money to print context studies. I suggested that they could
make them attractive and sell copies. You guessed it. My suggestion was
rejected because a context study must contain certain material. Well, well,
well, overt admission that a document must be boring in order to be
official.

This has been an ongoing debate, and I have made my views felt before, but
it seems suicidal for a profession to make its literature inaccessible to
outsiders who might be interested. Most of us became archaeologists after
we read the works of that handful of professionals who are able to write
competently and engagingly.

      _____
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  Ned Heite, Camden, DE  http://home.dmv.com/~eheite/index.html