My pizza user guides are hurting my head.

A large store-bought pizza came with not one, but two sets of cooking instructions. One set printed on a label on the front, the other printed on the cardboard back. They specify different cooking times and temperatures.

What’s a hungry tech writer to do?

Using the latest information analysis techniques, I averaged out the temperate and cooking times and analyzed the result. The result was that the pizza cooked rather quickly, so it could be that the front instructions (with the lower temperature) were the more correct ones.

You’d think that the manufacturers of the cardboard backing and the manufacturers of the front label would talk to each other and issue only one set of instructions. They are probably not even aware of each other’s existence.

This is a good case where is less information is more. Better to have one set of instructions than two sets that conflict with each other, a common hazard in our profession.