Re: Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes

Subject: Re: Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes
From: "Tom Johnson" <tomjohnson1492 -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: Techwr-l <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:08:03 -0600

For those of you participated in the survey, thank you. Basically, I'm
presenting on careers in technical writing to a group of college students
who hold many of the stereotypes mentioned in the survey. I'm hoping to use
your responses to generate discussion about some of the issues. I realize
there are flaws in the survey, but I'm hoping that overall the discrepancies
will be minor and that general trends will come out on top. So far 98 people
have participated in the survey. If you haven't taken it yet and still want
to, here's the link: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/70615/stereotypes.

Fred, sorry about bringing up the sellout question again. This topic came up
in an earlier survey, but that survey was an informal blog poll in my
sidebar (and was ripped apart on this listserv and eventually removed).
However, it seemed to fit in with this stereotypes survey, so I thought I'd
include it. Re the IT focus, this is a tendency that I'm guilty of. I've
always worked in an IT dept of some kind. Thanks for reminding me about
this.

Char, you asked where the stereotypes are coming from. They're coming from
perceptions some college students have, as well as general sentiments I've
sensed in discussions about technical writing. By the way, speaking of
surveys, will you post the results of the HAT survey today?

Guy, sorry that the titles and my descriptions at times seemed to be at odds
with each other.

Evan, re narrowing the scope to True, False, and Sometimes, I think everyone
would end up writing Sometimes, which wouldn't be that useful. Kind of like
those discussions where all someone says is "it depends, it depends, ..."

Again, thanks for your feedback and participation with the survey.

Tom



On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 11:07 PM, Evan Read <eread -at- iinet -dot- net -dot- au> wrote:

> I haven't conducted many surveys myself (and certainly none were to
> become material for classes) but I wondered if the answers should have
> perhaps just been "True", "Sometimes", "False". I have noticed that
> the narrower the scope of the answer in the survey, the fewer times it
> was selected. I wonder if having several answers selected once, with
> others selected 50 times, makes much sense?
>
> Then again, I am no statistician.
>
> Evan.
>
>
> On 01/10/2008, at 6:05 AM, Guy K. Haas wrote:
>
> > I took the survey, and in the comments box at the end, I told Tom
> > that in
> > many questions I had one answer in mind for the initial question,
> > but then
> > the brief paragraph that discussed/explained it jerked me around.
> >
> > Take this one:
> >
> > 2. Technical writing stifles your creativity.
> >
> > Because you spend all day immersed in writing instructional text,
> > your own
> > sense of creativity declines. You feel fewer flashes of inspiration
> > and
> > generally have less creative drive and desire. You even find yourself
> > adopting the same techniques of writing short, clear, dry, humorless
> > sentences in your email and journal. True or False?
> >
> > There are four separate statements there, and I would not answer
> > TRUE or
> > FALSE to all of them. I'd go with TRUE on some and FALSE on others.
> >
> > In fact, even the first sentence of the paragraph gives me problems --
> > even if I spend part of my day installing the latest beta of the
> > product,
> > then exercising it, then writing some instructions and exercising the
> > product some more, then tracking down an SME to ask what a certain
> > command
> > in the GUI means when it says <whatever it says>, I might say that my
> > sense of creativity declined -- even though I did NOT spend all day
> > "immersed in writing".
> >
> > Maybe Tom needs to re-chunk the survey into more, briefer questions.
> >
> > And, when I took the survey an hour or so ago, it was not limited to
> > true/false, but offered mostly true, sometimes true/sometimes false,
> > and
> > mostly false.
> >
> > What's up with THAT?
> >
> > --Guy K. Haas
> > Software Exegete in Silicon Valley
> >
> >
> >
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> > ComponentOne Doc-To-Help gives you everything you need to author and
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> > http://www.componentone.com/DocToHelp/
> >
> > True single source, conditional content, PDF export, modular help.
> > Help & Manual is the most powerful authoring tool for technical
> > documentation. Boost your productivity! http://www.helpandmanual.com
> >
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> authors, developers, and policy writers. Download a FREE trial.
> http://www.componentone.com/DocToHelp/
>
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http://www.componentone.com/DocToHelp/

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Help & Manual is the most powerful authoring tool for technical
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Re: Ten Technical Writing Stereotypes: From: Evan Read

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