Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question

Subject: Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2001 13:38:01 -0700

Deborah Ray wrote:


How does your experience as a technical writer affect your perception of the documentation you use?


After thinking for a moment, I had to answer "I have much less confidence in the quality."

In no particular order, my reasons for this response were:

- Too many manuals are rushed. As a result, many are incomplete and have had no technical edit. Many never do, even after several revisions.

- At some companies, information is not included for marketing reasons (that is, because it would make the company or product look bad if it was mentioned).

- I've come across too many bad writers, both when cleaning up after them on a job and when trying to hire one (Granted, I'm a perfectionist, and have been known to flagellate my own incompetencies more than anyone else's, but I would rather mark a batch of first year composition essays than wade through a pile of tech-writing essays - although doing either requires large doses of Orwell or Jane Austen to restore my mental state and prose style).

- Most writers seem far more concerned with job titles, being respected by SMEs or scrambling for positions in the local STC than in learning their subject matter.

- Groucho Marx said he wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have him as a member. In the same spirit, I wouldn't trust any profession in which I could be actively engaged.

--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"My bonnie moorhen lies over the main,
And it will be summer ere he comes again,
But when he comes back again, some folk can ken,
I'll drink a health to my bonny moorhen."
-Jacobean Song


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