Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question
As a technical writer learning tools or technologies, how valuable have you generally found formal training to be?I answered "slightly valuable." When I first switched to technical writing, I took some courses in a local certificate program religiously. Unfortunately, the program, offered by a local university, was largely run by STC manager-types whose hands-on experience seemed several years out of date. As I started finding work, the program seemed about as realistic as Hackos' Managing Your Documentation Projects; it definitely did not prepare me for real world situations. Nor, the couple of times that I hired another writer, did the candidates who had finished the program seem any betterprepared than those who hadn't.
I started drifting into editing and tool-based design courses at the same university, which were somewhat more to the point, but still too elementary to be worth the time and money. For various reasons, I never did bother to finish the program.
I'm looking now at programming and network courses at a local vocational institute. They seem demanding, but I think they'd be more useful to me than any of the stuff I took before.
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Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com
"The following morning, the headlines were tall,
'Really, it was inevitable,
Mr. Dumpty was drunk when he fell from the wall,
He was already cracked, and shell-shocked and all.'"
- Tommy Sands, "Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed"
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New TECHWR-L Poll Question: From: Deborah S. Ray
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