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Subject:text development vs tech writing From:"Damien Braniff" <dbraniff -at- amphion -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 8 Jun 2001 08:28:01 +0100
Like an earlier poster, I started writing with pen and paper.
Text was generated, reviewed and off to the typists for input, layout etc.
Graphics were hand drawn and then sent to the artists for creation. These could be detailed block diagrams etc that just needed to be copied or it could simply be an idea -this is the sort of thing I'm after and the graphics bod would come up with something, we'd review etc.
Now I get to do everything, what fun! Creating text only doesn't mean you abdicate responsibility for layout etc. It's still up to you to decide on the flow of the document, how to get the message across, what to say in what order. If it was me, I'd want to know of any major structural changes (there's always things that can be tweaked/argued about - do we need to say this first etc) as it would mean one of two things:
I didn't understand the product and got it all wrong
The person doing the changes doesn't understand product and is making it less understandable
If I didn't have a layout in place in my head then I couldn't write, at least not well, about any product. So while I may be concentrating on the text there must me some sort of structure there based on audience etc.
A lot of it comes down to trust - can the person doing the formatting do the job? As my first mentor told me when I started proofing her work, one of the hardest things is to NOT change something. The urge to change is often there, not that it's wrong or hard to understand, but because it's not how you would have said it. This is similar, don't worry about how it's laid out etc as long as it makes sense (as you intended).
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