Tip 26 - use this
The word with the most definitions in the Oxford English dictionary is “set.” It has 430 different ways to use it! (And, it will apparently be overtaken in the 2037 edition by “run” and its anticipated 645 meanings!)
Fortunately, “set” and “run” have pretty standard meanings in our context of documentation! The word that can “run” off the rails for us, though, is “use.”
It’s not that “use” has too many confusing definitions to be clearly understood. To “avail oneself of”, “put into action”, or “carry out a purpose or action by means of” aren’t all that dissimilar. But, “use” often ends up obscuring or replacing that “purpose or action” and we lose the chance to express ourselves more precisely… perhaps more helpfully!
One PR suggestion I often make is to try to express exactly how or in what way, something is “used.” If someone handed you a hammer and said, “Use this!” you’d have a reasonable idea of what they meant. But, you can “use” the claw portion of a hammer to remove nails, too!
- ✅ … this lets you create a list from your fetched blog posts
- 😐 … this lets you use your array of fetched blog posts
Upon seeing “use” at the beginning of an instruction, I imagine physically throwing a feature, tool, or option at my unsuspecting reader and shouting, “Use this!”
Can I be more helpful by giving them an explicit step to execute?
- ✅ Add this attribute to make a server island
- 😐 Use this attribute to make a server island
It’s challenging not to use “use!” (Not to write “use”…?) But it’s rewarding to dig deeper than my first instinct and find a more descriptive word that gives my reader just that little bit more guidance!
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