Lesson 4: Writing Procedures

Provide one instruction per step

One of the common mistakes people make when writing procedures is trying to stuff several steps into one line. They think that each instruction is simple so they can safely combine a few easy directions into one combined step. Unfortunately no matter how simple those individual instructions are, any step that tells you how to do more than one thing is potentially confusing. Avoid that confusion by limiting each step to one instruction no matter how simple or mundane.

For instance, when telling users how to create a new account you could say:

1. Enter the desired username and password into the appropriate fields
2. Select the desired permissions for the new user
3. Hit enter to add the user

but this is clearer:

1. Enter the desired username in the username field
2. Enter the desired password in the password field
3. Select the Read checkbox if this user has read privileges
4. Select the Write checkbox if this user has write privileges
5. Select the Exec checkbox if this user has execute privileges
6. Hit enter to add the user

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