[Collins] Collins manuals

[Glen Zook]

In either the last half of 1967 or sometime in 1968, all of the salaried employees at the "new" Collins Radio Company headquarters here in Richardson, Texas, were required to take a course in "effective writing".  I can't remember if this course was for 3-days or 5-days.

The company that offered this course had developed a "formula" to determine how much education was required to "understand" any particular written item.  If I remember correctly, this formula included how many words in each sentence, how many syllables in each word, how many adjectives, how many adverbs, etc., were used in the document.

It was pointed out that most newspapers required about a 6th grade education to comprehend the information, most "general interest" magazines required between a 6th grade and 8th grade education, and most technical magazines required between an 8th grade education up to a 12th grade education.  When this formula was applied to the Collins Radio manuals, especially those written for the military, instead of requiring an 10th grade education, required, in general, at least 2-years post PhD education was required to fully comprehend!  When this situation became apparent, certain persons at the executive level in Collins Radio, decided to try to remedy this by requiring all salaried employees to take the course in "effective writing".

At the time, it was stated that Collins Radio Company would try to "hire away" some technical writers from Heath and/or Motorola because the manuals produced by those companies met the education requirements that were considered optimum for understanding the information needed to properly service equipment manufactured by Collins Radio.  I don't know if this ever happened because the division in which I was employed didn't usually write any manuals.
 
Glen, K9STH


Website:  http://k9sth.com