Good Writing Tips — How to Design a Document Revision History Template
Keeping track of the revisions you’ve made to a frequently updated technical or business document is important.
by Ugur Akinci, Technical Communication Center dot com
A document revision history table will save you a lot of headaches when it is time to send out your document for a review.
Reviewers, especially in hi-tech companies, are very busy people. They are usually SME (Subject Matter Expert) engineers, developers, product managers or the client who hired you to draft the document.
If the document is just a few pages long, then asking your reviewers to read the “whole document” and give you a feedback is not a big deal. No one will complain about that.
But imagine you’ve finished the fourth draft of a 2,000 page document with 250 tables and 360 figures.
And you are asking your reviewers “to read” the whole thing and get back to you “as soon as possible.”
But there is a problem there.
PROBLEM: In documentation business, there is no such thing as “ASAP.” Sometimes ASAP means “never.” Give them a concrete date and time when you expect them to finish the review. For…
