Re: What Are Writing Skills?

Subject: Re: What Are Writing Skills?
From: Bill Lawrence <lawrence -at- mayaviz -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 09:16:16 -0500


Tony spouted:

"I was told that the "meat" of writing skills is
structured writing skills. But try researching to
find the specific, concrete techniques and steps
involved in structured writing - they don't exist! Structured writing is "blue smoke and mirrors".

I guess I'll have to disagree here, at least in our environment. It used to be that simply being a good writer would allow one to succeed in any of the writing fields, but times have changed. If one is working in a single-source environment, writing skills are only part of what's required. There's also the ability to stop writing linear documents and start thinking of reusable document modules, or "document objects." Teaching people object-oriented writing isn't easy, and having great writing skills doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to do it. Also, structured writing becomes even more important, and even extends to creating "design patterns" for various types of "topics." Information Mapping is a very generalized example of this. We have our own design patterns based on our own needs, and these are encoded in XML templates for each documentation object type.

Bill








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References:
RE: What Are Writing Skills?: From: Oja, W. Kelly

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