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Subject:Single most important tech writer skill? From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 13 Aug 2001 11:15:01 -0400
Lief Erickson reports: <<I just looked at the results for the "What is the
single most important skill set for technical writers to have?" poll. I was
shocked! 65% of the respondents said Writing/Editing skills are the most
important.>>
Why so shocked? We're writers and editors, thus writing and editing are by
definition our most important skills. In fact, this is sufficiently
self-evident that it's not really worthy of note.
<<The Minnesota High Tech Association recently published a report that...
found for technical communicators was the ability to
analyze/integrate/interpret information was the most important skill.>>
I suspect that they made one mistake in their study and you made a matching
mistake in your assumptions about their report. On their part, they
neglected the fact that analyzing, interpreting, and integrating are all
what I'd consider part of writing activities. On your part, you neglected
the fact that "most important" doesn't mean "only important". It's like the
ABCs of first aid: Airway comes first, but that doesn't mean it's more
important than Breathing and Circulation combined just because they come
second and third.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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