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RE: What do you do when you don't have anyone with the time to reviewand edit your docs
Subject:RE: What do you do when you don't have anyone with the time to reviewand edit your docs From:"Pinkham, Jim" <Jim -dot- Pinkham -at- voith -dot- com> To:"Robert Lauriston" <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>, "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:44:59 -0600
Yes. Reminds me of the time when, fresh out of college, I was taking my
first career job as a news reporter, and the publisher was a Pulitzer
prize-winning author. He came down the stairs, handed me his freshly
typed column, and asked me to proof it. Doubtless responding to my
suddenly elevated eyebrows, he looked at me and said, "Every writer
needs an editor."
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+jim -dot- pinkham=voith -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+jim -dot- pinkham=voith -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Robert Lauriston
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 1:35 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: What do you do when you don't have anyone with the time to
reviewand edit your docs
I'd send the person I report to an email saying something like, "I know
we may not have the budget for it, but this really should not go to
customers without being proofread by someone other than the author."
If I reported to someone who doesn't understand the necessity, I'd
include an explanation of why writers can't proofread their own work.
On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Wade Courtney
<wade -dot- courtney -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've just recently finished a user guide. I've sent it out for review,
> and I have reviewed and edited it many times myself, but I am at a
> point where I can no longer spot my mistakes. What do you do when
> there is no one to read your stuff, and they still want to push out
> the docs anyway without a proper review.
>
> I feel (sorry David) that they are going to come back to me and nail
> me for mistakes, even though they know that there wasn't a proper
> review. I have worked for employers in the past that expected
> perfection. I realize that this concept is not realistic, but it's
still very prominent.
>
> Am I making sense? Does anyone have any advice?
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Are you looking for one documentation tool that does it all? Author,
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Try the latest Doc-To-Help 2009 v3 risk-free for 30-days at: http://www.doctohelp.com/
Explore CAREER options and paths related to Technical Writing,
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