Analysis of badly written recipes

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Please read the following article on recipes:
Anderson, L.V. (2015, October 21). Kitchen nightmares: Why poorly written recipes drive me nuts. Slate Plus. https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/10/recipes-why-are-they-so-badly-written.html

  1. After perusing the article, examine the following set of instructions for a recipe and answer this question: According to Anderson, what is wrong with each step?
  2. Place 2 lbs. of ground beef into the pot.
  3. Mix 1 cup chopped onion into the ground beef
  4. Stir ground beef.
  5. Anderson writes the following:
    Don’t take this the wrong way, but a good recipe is written under the assumption that the people who read it are idiots.
    Is this good advice for technical writers in general when they write instructions for a task? What problems or frustrations might occur if a set of instructions is written assuming the audience has no knowledge of the task when the audience does, in fact, have some background knowledge of the task?

Sample Solution

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