Re: This too is technical communication

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

The only circumstances where I would consider it acceptable for a writer to proceed
to document something he or she "understands just about nothing" about without first
understanding a lot more is when asked to document something that is out of the area/s
originally recruited for and in a ridiculously short amount of time.  If you *could* make
yourself knowledgeable about the source material given reasonable time but can
legitimately say to SMEs and management "you don't have time for me to come up to
speed on this stuff technically, so we need to work differently from my usual methods,"
then ok.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Emily Berk" <emily -at- armadillosoft -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007 7:38 AM
Subject: RE: This too is technical communication


> The question is when does the writer cry uncle and admit that she understands just about nothing of all the source materials she's 
> looked at and can't even imagine where to start.

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