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Subject:Re: Why marketing should make the user manuals From:Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 1 Sep 2006 10:26:53 -0700 (PDT)
--- John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> > It all comes down to purpose and execution. User
> guides are not
> > intended to wow anyone. They're meant to educate.
>
> Why must they be mutually exclusive?
>
> John Posada
Because 99.9% of the time, the people tasked to do the
user guides are given neither the time nor the budget
to make them both educational and wowish, that's why.
Another, different take on user guides being the
purview of marketing:
Doing user guides as part of marketing gives the
writers who do the guides a chance at a better career.
It puts the writers under the control of the marketing
branch. And marketing people are much more likely to
protect and fight for their people when budget cutting
time comes, than are engineering types.
When the time comes to discuss layoffs, engineering
types are much more likely to think in terms of
operational efficiency, and say yes we can live
without a tech writer who is a regular employee, or
with none at all. The thinking of marketing types is
naturally more geared toward thinking of maintaining
relations and 'people' matters, so when it comes time
to discuss layoffs they are more inclined to insist
they have to keep their people.
----------------
Keith Hood
Senior (only) tech writer
ACS, Inc.
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