RE: You're SUPPOSED to have good communication skills if you're a tech writer

["Mark Baker" <mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com>]

Jan Henning wrote

> Mark, we seem to understand something different when we say "writing".
> You appear to talk about forming sentences that are more or less
> grammatically correct and spelled largely recognizably. I am talking
> about expressing a given set of facts and relations clearly and
> unambiguously.

Jan,

You were the one who insisted that there was such a thing as writing skills
that could exist and be of value independant of any other skill or
knowledge. I contended that that position was untenable. Surely it is clear
that "expressing a given set of facts and relations clearly and
unambiguously" requires more than writing skills. It requires, at least, a
mastery of the "given set of facts and relations". I may also require the
ability to understand and to bridge conceptual gaps (which is not a writing
skill per se).

You claim the writing skills can exist and be of value by themselves, but
you then define writing skills in such a way as to make it impossible to
separate them from other skills.

I stick to my guns on this one. Writing skills are the foundation of a
literate society, but they always exist, and are given value, by their
connection to other skills and knowledge. Even the greatest stylists wrote
about something. Their style serves as an ornament to their prose, but its
true virtue lies in its substance.

---
Mark Baker
Senior Technical Writer
Stilo Corporation
1900 City Park Drive, Suite 504 , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J 1A3
Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com
Web: http://www.stilo.com

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