"Fantastic Beasts" from GOST: Exotic Documents and Familiar Documents in Exotic Cases

One may have different attitudes towards the GOST 19th and 34th series standards, but these standards continue to play an important role in the lives of IT specialists, particularly for technical writers. Some documents mentioned in these standards are encountered in almost every project. Technical specifications, explanatory notes, user manuals — nearly every technical writer has dealt with these documents.

However, from time to time, ‘exotic’ documents, which are described in the GOST standards in a way that is more confusing than helpful, sneak into projects. Occasionally, the challenges are posed by familiar documents in unusual situations, where one needs to describe something that, at first glance, does not appear to exist in the system.

As a rule, to write such documents well, it is necessary to understand the intent of the standards’ authors and their conceptual framework. This will be the focus of the presentation.