Yes, yes, I know this is a knitting blog. Bear with me for a minute.
I’m currently reading The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. It’s the third of three fabulous books by author Atul Gawande, a surgeon. His previous books, Better and Complications, explore the question of why things go wrong, despite the extensive training and best efforts of the people involved. The Checklist Manifesto takes the next step, and explores a simple tool for managing complex tasks and minimizing goofs: checklists.
Used in airplane cockpits, on construction sites, and – increasingly – in hospitals, a good checklist is a short list of must-do tasks that even the most experienced people occasionally forget to perform. Each task is stated clearly and succinctly. By acting as a series of quick reminders – not as a comprehensive set of how-to instructions – the checklist greatly increases the likelihood of quality output.
Here’s where we get back to knitting.
Until recently, I used to do a fair amount of work as a tech editor, reviewing patterns and books to ensure they were clear, concise, consistent, complete, and correct. I never used a formal checklist. Oh, sure, sometimes I’d have on hand a style guide, a document explaining how the patterns were to be presented: with what punctuation and phrasing, in what sections, with what goals, etc. I would refer back to the style guide when I needed to remember, say, whether the client preferred “needles” or “ndls.” And I had mental checklists, slightly different for each client, with tasks like “check abbreviations list” and “ensure stitch counts are multiple of stitch pattern.” But who’s to say I didn’t miss a step, here and there?
I’m a big believer in style guides. (The one I use for my own patterns is currently four pages long.) But now I’m thinking checklists would be a dandy idea too.
Tagged: books, pattern writing.
I have checklists that I cut-n-paste into a "notes" file for each project that I work on. Keeps me from forgetting the little things that I'm sure I'd otherwise forget at some point, like inserting a copy of the charts into the Word doc so the editor can refer to them easily, instead of having to pull up Illustrator.
And I would *love* it if everyone had a style guide! Searching through old patterns to see how xyz was done last time really gets old. Sometimes I'm clever enough to make a note in a "style" file for myself, but not always.
» Karen Frisa
Karen, do you create this “notes” file on the fly for each project? Or do you have a basic file that you copy and tweak?
Like I said, I never used a formal checklist. But as I would work through a pattern, I would take note of any issue that I wanted to check later—for instance, I’d remind myself to go over the abbreviations list, or to verify that the sleeve shaping was complete before the sleeve reached its full length. Any “I gotta check that” idea that popped into my head would get written down so I could continue with my original train of thought without fear that the check would get forgotten. Now I wonder if that kind of stuff could be distilled into a general checklist. Of course, the checklist would still need to be augmented for a given project. But wouldn’t a general checklist be a great place to start? (Not that I want to do the distilling!)
As for style guides... yes, they’re awesome. If/when I get back into tech editing, I’m toying with the idea of REQUIRING a DETAILED style guide from each client before starting any project. Oh, what a dream...
» JC
The "notes" file gets created on the fly for each project, where "project" usually means a magazine issue (but could also be an individual pattern for a client). In it I put start/stop times for each pattern (for billing purposes), a copy of the checklist (which I cut-n-paste for each pattern as I start working on it), any "I gotta check that" notes for the pattern, and things I want to remember like the weight of the piece, weird things about the pattern, major things I had to change, etc.
My checklists are pretty short; maybe 6-ish items.
Requiring a detailed style guide... good luck with that. Lots of people aren't even consistent in their phrasing in one pattern, which leads me to believe consistent phrasing isn't important to them, so I doubt they'd take the time to do a style guide. Hmm, but I suppose if you wrote it up and they just made notes on it, that might work.
» Karen Frisa