Weekend links

Some links for you to explore this weekend:

• Wayne Schiess offers 8 ways to improve analytical, persuasive, and legal writing. (By the way, heavy connectors are words like notwithstanding the foregoing, which can be replaced with despite that, and consequently, which means so.)
• Kathy Sierra writes about a phenomenon I’ll call the Lake Woebegon Syndrome* (named for Garrison Kiellor’s fictional hometown, where “all the children are above average”): We tend to think our performance is better than our customers think it is. If caring for our customers, helping them be superstars, making it possible for them to excel is “Duh,” then how come more companies aren’t doing it?
• For you techwriters out there, my friend Solveig Haugland, OpenOffice.org diva and all-round Neat Person^TM, talks about why software manuals suck, and what we can do about it. (Hint: “It’s not about the commas.”)

Go forth and read!
* I Googled the phrase “Lake Wobegon Syndrome” and discovered that I’m not being as original as I had hoped; it’s not a widespread phrase, but as of this morning, there are 122 examples of it on the Web. Judging from the first few results, they’re all talking about the same “all above average” idea.