: Re: What is considered an acceptable length for a technical document? I have written dozens of technical and requirement specifications, and edited dozens more in 8+ years of engineering. The largest

@Fox6458700

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I think the important metric is “is it usable?” I think it is really about the quality and organization of the table of contents and the index and the data. It doesn’t matter if it is 10,000 pages if the reader can find the 3 useful pages they need easily in a short time. On the other hand, a confusing, disorganized 200 page document with mediocre data might frustrate readers and not help them at all.

Second metric to me would be “is it maintainable?” If it is so big that it can’t be well-maintained and parts are always out of date, it will just decay and decay.

So if you go on the basis of usability and maintainability, you might determine that 1 giant book is better off as 10 shorter books. The separate books act as a meta-index. The reader or maintainer can ignore the other 9 books when appropriate.

It sounds like the document is frustrating you, so maybe it is frustrating others also. You might do a survey of readers and maintainers to see what their complaints are, ask them a few questions. That could generate the hard data you need to suggest an improvement project, and maybe give you a list of things to focus on improving also.

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