Re: What Are Writing Skills?

[Tony Markos <ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Bruce:

Thanks from your thoughts.  You say that, besides
grammar skills, writing skills involve "...a sense of
how to structure lengthy material: how to assemble
pieces for clarity, to position for emphasis (or
de-emphasis), to create a sense of progression, and
similar purposes."

I must say, this sounds like systems analysis skills
to me.  In analysis we:

  *  Partition (i.e., chunk) the system into
right-size pieces - which of course determines how our
text will be chunked.

  *  Determine the position of the pieces of the
system in relationship to each other - which of course
will determine how to properly assemble our chunks of
text for clarity.

 *  Spell out necessary progressions within the system
- which of course determines necessary progressions
for our text. 

  *  Determine emphasis and deemphasis of system
chunks - which of course determines text to be
emphasized and deemphasized. 

You then comment: "Even in English Departments,
structure is poorly understood, and rarely taught.
These are the areas where skill and art come into 
play." 

My Comment:  In terms of documenting systems, of
course English Departments don't understand how to
structure documentation!  As Ed Yourdon (Data Flow
Diagram guru) teaches: Systems are multidimensional;
English (text) is one dimensional; it is not possible
to effectively document a multidemensional system
using single dimensionsional text. 

Tony Markos


--- Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com> wrote:

 
Tony Markos wrote:
Just out of curiosity, what is meant by "writing
skills"?  I mean, grammar aside, if the TW knows
the product and the users, he/she is going to document
it.  If not, nothing is going to save him/her.  Isn't
the real need analysis skills - not writing skills?


> It's not an either-or question. The term "technical
> writing" suggests a 
> mixture of skills, and one is not much good without
> the other. You 
> happen to be touting the technical side, but I'd
> argue against touting 
> the writing side just as strongly, were someone to
> take that position.
 
> However, I'd add that writing skills should be
> defined as more than 
> putting a clearly worded sentence together. As you
> imply, reaching a 
> basic competence in that area is fairly easy -
> although real expertise 
> at the sentence level is that's harder that some
> people think. However 
> writing skills should also cover a sense of how to
> structure lengthy 
> material: how to assemble pieces for clarity, to
> position for emphasis 
> (or de-emphasis), to create a sense of progression,
> and similar 
> purposes. Even in English Departments, structure is
> poorly understood, 
> and rarely taught. These are the areas where skill
> and art come into 
> play. ....


	
		
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