evildmp
Unclear: "Neither of them make much sense except for the user who has their hands on the machinery, ready to do things."
Neither of them make much sense except for the user who has their hands on the machinery, ready to do things"
My interpretation of that is:
Neither of them [a tutorial or a how-to] make much sense [for anyone] except for the user who has their hands on the machinery, ready to do things
In other words, they're both practically focused.
Perhaps the bit that's hard to parse is that the "except" applies to the implicit "for anyone". Because it's implicit, there's a chance that the brain can incorrectly parse the "except" as applying to "Neither of them" - at that point the sentence doesn't make sense because how can a person be an exception to a collection of document types not making much sense.
Another thing that might be at work - the "except" seems to be acting alone, between the [for anyone] and the "for the user" - it doesn't seem to be an "except for". It seems to be just an "except". The "for" seems to belong to "for the user".
Possible idea- maybe it would be cleared up by replacing "for" with "to", i.e.
Neither of them make much sense except ~for~ to the user who has their hands on the machinery, ready to do things"
Interpreted as:
Neither of them [a tutorial or a how-to] make much sense [to anyone] except ~for~ to the user who has their hands on the machinery, ready to do things"
Perfect, yes, I agree with replacing "for" with "to." That fixes my perceived issue.
A better description of that perceived issue follows. From your first interpretation:
Neither of them [a tutorial or a how-to] make much sense [for anyone] except for the user who has their hands on the machinery, ready to do things
I felt that "them" indeed referred to "[a tutorial or a how-to]," but I felt that "for anyone" wasn't sufficiently implied. IMO, while reading, the thing "except for" seems like it will refer to is either a tutorial or a how-to, until the actual noun used is neither: "the user."
Of course, it made sense with some mental substitutions, and is figure-out-able, but I'd argue the implications required to make it technically correct are too far a departure from convention.
Hmm. On rereads and edits, it's no longer clear to me what "except for" implies about the next few words. But I still think switching "for" for "to" is an improvement.