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Subject:rewriting versus writing from scratch? From:Stina Lane-Cummings <stina -at- real -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 28 Nov 2000 14:07:53 -0800
I'm the manager of a seven-person documentation team. We're at a crossroads
where we can make a decision about who writes white papers (we write a
bunch of other stuff that isn't in contention). There are two thoughts:
- Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) should write, and the docs team should
polish the SMEs' work. I don't like this idea because of what happened
during our test case*.
- Even the best writing done by SMEs takes so much time to untangle and
rewrite that the writers should write from scratch, using the SMEs as
clients/consultants, because it's faster for both parties and easier for
the SMEs. In my five years of writing, I found it always took just as long
to rewrite as it did to write from scratch.
Have you experienced a situation like this? What else should I be thinking
about? What kinds of hybrid scenarios make sense?
Stina Lane-Cummings
Manager, Media Systems Development Documentation
RealNetworks, Inc.
Seattle, WA
*Test Case: We only have one test case. A program manager wrote a white
paper (took him 3 days) which I asked our editor to clean up. The editor,
being a generalist, had a hard time with some of the terminology. And
untangling the writing gave him a haggard look at the end. He spent three
days on it and wished he could spend more (a deadline loomed). I showed the
final white paper to one of our senior writers and asked him to imagine
how long it would take him to write it; he thought two to three weeks. The
editor said that if one of the writers on the team had written the
document, it would only have taken one day to edit it, rather than the 3+
days it took.
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