Gerry McGovern brings up a provocative thought in his February 5th issue of his New Thinking Newsletter. The title can make many a technical communicator sit up and take notice: PDFs are evil, lazy, slothful and sinful! We’re back to the basic question here: what are you trying to communicate? I think Gerry McGovern has a point when he says the customer already knows about your company and looks for more information about something specific, not a repeat of the company’s message. It would be disappointing to go to the trouble of downloading the document and finding that the majority of the material I printed out did not cover the topic I was researching. However, you don’t know where that document will end up. Does it get downloaded to be read on the train? Does the document change hands many times? At some point, the connection to your company might…
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