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Subject:RE: Re: What to do? From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:28 Oct 2003 22:28:18 GMT
I think the problem with your thinking is the "taught"
part, unless you're including self-teaching. I've
managed writers who were not graduate engineers but
were nevertheless very "technical," because they were
able to take a documentation project and treat it as if
it were a design project. The real "engineering
discipline" that most of us who went through engineering
schools came away from is not necessarily the coursework in
differential equations or fluid mechanics, but the ability
to recognize the need to seek out and acquire necessary
technical information and effectively apply it to the right
objectives. So the non-pilot writing the flight manual is
perfectly capable, so long as he/she recognizes the need
to seek out others who have real information and
experience and not just accept what is spoonfed to
them by an engineer who probably *also* has never piloted
an aircraft with empty tanks and make it only grammatically
"correct."
As for the idea that someone who doesn't have an
engineering education can't grasp and use technical
subjects, as someone who *has* that education, I'd
rather calculate a stress equation or a chemical
reaction than diagram a sentence any day. There's
"technical" and then there's "technical."
Gene Kim-Eng
------- Original Message -------
On
Tue, 28 Oct 2003 13:15:47 -0800 Chuck Martin?wrote:
What I'm saying--I've said it before--is that Technical Communication is an
engineering discipline.
Would you trust the information in an article about what to do if you run
out of avgas if it was written by someone who didn't have experience behind
a stick?
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