Proof read. Please.

I'm not a writer, I'm a computer guy, but I strive for my writing to be as clear as possible so it will be understood.

One of my major pet peeves is technical writing that doesn't get proof read.

In a study guide for a certification exam, the author described how to create partitions in SQL Server 2005. The code sample for the right partition was a copy / paste of the code for the left partition but neglected to change LEFT to RIGHT, so both code samples were identical. Good luck with the exam. (The book was not from MS Press.)

Another example was in a technical magazine, in a Q & A column. The reader's letter stated that he wanted to display all parent records that did not have a child record, showed the T-SQL he would use, and asked how to perform that query using LINQ. However, his sample code used EXISTS instead of NOT EXISTS which obviously would not yield the desired result. Nobody at the mag caught that, and the columnist simply replied with a LINQ example that answered the original question. If you happened to see the original question & used the reader's code sample, your results would be opposite of what you expected. Imagine that you need to send a reminder letter to all customers that have not paid their bill, but instead you send the notice to those that paid. Oops.