RE: Have to know Programming to be able to write about it? -- NO

["Miller, Alan" <Alan -dot- Miller -at- prometric -dot- com>]

My hand is most assuredly UP (virtually speaking). My areas include all types of power plants (nuclear, fossil, hydroelectric, waste-to-energy, pumped storage, combined cycle, combustion turbine, diesel electric, wind, solar, and geo-thermal) and all the technologies (from coal handling equipment to reactor protection and control systems) associated with them. Did operations manuals, procedures and training manuals for ... well, several decades. Trained many SMEs to become technical writers and trainers, and trained many "technical writers" to be SMEs in the technologies they were struggling to write about. Guess what? It's far, far easier to make a good SME into a good tech writer than to make a technically illiterate writer into an SME.

<Story>A client (whose name will be omitted to protect the ignorant) once thought it would be cheaper to hire some out-of-work recent graduate Journalism/English majors at low pay rates and train them in the nuclear power plant technologies they were to document than to use real SMEs. It was a disaster. A year later most still didn't know a control rod from a fishing rod and not one had written an acceptable document. They all got laid off and my team was hired to make some of the plant personnel into tech writers. Took us less than a month.</Story>

I've had similar experiences at refineries, tire plants, and coal yards. You have to know what you write, and write what you know.

Al Miller
"Chief Documentation Curmudgeon"
Prometric, Inc., a part of The Thomson Corporation
Baltimore, Maryland
www.prometric.com

Remember, we're all in this together.
          --Red Green

-----Original Message-----
From: John Posada [mailto:JPosada -at- book -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 2:30 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Have to know Programming to be able to write about it? --
NO

OK...a poll.

If you have SME level knowledge in any subject and are a technical writer
about that subject, raise your hand.

It's absurd to say that because you are a Subject Matter Expert (SME), that
you probably aren't a good writer.

A SME is a classification of knowledge level...not a classification of
position...it just turns out that we deal with SMEs who know specific things
that we might not.

>communicator. SMEs are rarely capable of, or interested in, doing that. 
>Business analysts and systems analysts perform similar functions within 
>their spheres of expertise -- bridging users and technology.

There are lots of SMEs who are good writers. I happen to be a SME in
microfilm technology. I wrote about it for 18 years. With no additional
input, I can write anything you want on microfilming the records of a
complete Fortune 500 corporation. It's not my fault that there isn't a big
need for that knowledge anymore...but that doesn't change the fact that I am
and I can write about it well.

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
NY: 212-414-6656
Dayton: 732-438-3372
"Alright, nobody move! I've got a dragon here, and I'm not afraid to use it"
---------- Donkey

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