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RE: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is more important than style)
Subject:RE: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is more important than style) From:"Sean Brierley" <sbri -at- haestad -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 2 Dec 2002 13:41:16 -0500
Maybe they are. Maybe with some experience, education, and training
they'd be good solid tech writers.
But, programmers are interested in programming and not writing. So they
get upset when the EPS doesn't display on-screen nicely in FrameMaker,
or when the raster of their flow chart makes the fonts look all
pixilated, or when the print vendor says their color graphics are three
color--three, whose? Or their writing is all over the place in terms of
style, tense, etc. And, page layout is a smorgasbord of fonts and/or
font styles, and you get three headings in a row with no content
between, and the headings are level 1, 3, and 6, and then the online
help has empty topics . . . .. And, Chicago 14 is an old album not a
style guide, and who cares about style guides anyway, MS clearly doesn't
use theirs. Subject verb agreement? Sure, mostly that is. Content, we've
got that and plenty of it, all in a one-sentence, two-page paragraph.
Okay, I went overboard with that one.
My point is, programmers need to get experience, education, and training
as a technical writer to be a good one. My extended point is that you
need more than a native language to be a proficient technical writer.
-----Original Message-----
From: cpwinter -at- rahul -dot- net [mailto:cpwinter -at- rahul -dot- net]
Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 3:19 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is more
important than style)
On 19 Nov 2002, at 19:23, Mike Stockman wrote:
> Not to burst your bubble or anything, but I know some programmers who
are
> excellent writers, as well as being very good at software development.
I would expect most good programmers to also be good at writing. The
cognitive skills are similar. Whether they choose to write text (as
opposed to writing programs) is another question. It's understandable
that they might prefer not to exercise the same set of "muscles" on two
different tasks.
Competent use of language is basic to most career fields. Not
essential, alas, but basic. (Or perhaps I should say "Not required,
alas,
but essential.")
I feel a rant coming on, so I'll close.
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