Red Hat Technical Writing Style Guide

Parts of this are excellent. I teach a contract-drafting course for 2L and 3L law students. Some aren't good writers. When I mark up their work, I can provide them with links to specific points in the RH guide.

Some parts aren't so great. Example:

> EXAMPLE[:] Remote users can connect to network resources simply by authenticating to their local machine. IMPROVEMENT[:] Remote users can connect to network resources by authenticating to their local machine.

It's not at all obvious that you improve the sentence by omitting "simply." You lose some compressed information: in this case, an implication that alternatives to local authentication might be more complex. This implication might be significant, to some readers and certainly to the writer.

In my experience, technical people tend to tag way too many topics with “simply”. It is usually best to get rid of the word.

Fair.

I agree. It usually seems simple to the author but it's bloody annoying when some documentations says something is simple and it actually isn't.

Fair. Context matters.

Same in spoken word; I don't know if this is a regional (western European, expat-English) thing, but a lot of people will interspers their spoken sentences with "basically" and "actually" a lot. It's gratuitous and more of a verbal tic than something that adds to their sentence.

But maybe I'm overthinking it too much. I prefer reading.

Depending on where the emphasis is (which there is none in written form), it could be read as:

"How to connect to network resources simply? By authenticating to their local machine" (which I think is how you interpreted it)

or "How to connect to network resources? Simply by authenticating to their local machine" (which I think is what was meant)

The ambiguity itself is a good enough reason to not use this form. If the former was meant, say "the simplest way to connect to network resources is ...", otherwise just drop the "simply" as suggested

I refuse to use the word "simple" in my docs writing for this precise reason. I have come to view the word to seem condescending/elitist, even if that's not the intent.

If something is written as simple, but I as an entrant to something view it as not simple, I'm going to be severely discouraged - "if this is the simple thing, what is the hard thing?"

It's often an unnecessary adjective.