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Re: What is happening to us -- was RE: What's wrong with this headline?
Subject:Re: What is happening to us -- was RE: What's wrong with this headline? From:Ken Poshedly <poshedly -at- bellsouth -dot- net> To:Stephen Arrants <steve -at- mbfbioscience -dot- com>, William Sherman <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>, "salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com" <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>, "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 13 Jun 2012 09:56:53 -0700 (PDT)
I think I recall this topic cropping up here not too long ago, and I think I
said the same thing then as I will once more.
That is, perhaps we make our job look too easy.
Walk by an engineer's work station while he's got AutoCAD or Microstation
running full-tilt-boogie and to most folks, the worker is performing absolute
magic and given a little more time could possibly create gold from sandstone. It
doesn't matter that lots of what he or she is composing in that
multi-thousand-dollar program could "technically" be done with PCPaintbrush. I
know that's a real big assumption, but you get the idea. The average
(non-tekkie) passerby will most probably be in absolute awe and not even
consider that he or she could actually do those same things in that same program
but only after many years of training and experience.
However, walk have an average (non-tekkie) person walk past any of our work
station while we're running FrameMaker or anything else EXCEPT Word while we're
manipulating fonts, setting line spacing, balancing columns, determining how to
best and most concisely and accurately word the next step in a seirs of 25 or so
steps and we're almost bound to hear "Oh, I can do that!"
________________________________
From: Stephen Arrants <steve -at- mbfbioscience -dot- com>
To: William Sherman <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>; "salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com"
<salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>; "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com"
<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Wed, June 13, 2012 9:32:32 AM
Subject: RE: What is happening to us -- was RE: What's wrong with this headline?
William Sherman says:
> As such, it impacts our jobs in that fewer people seem to view technical
> writers as a profession and as worth any money. After all, everyone learned
> to write in third grade.
I think the "everyone can write, we learned it in the third grade" attitude is a
big part of the problem. I've been told "Well, he has a PhD and has written
journal articles.
So we know he can write." But can he write accurate, concise procedures? How
about creating any of the other documents needed?
Or will editing and rewriting take me more time than doing it myself?
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