Re: What is happening to us -- was RE: What's wrong with this headline?

[yehoshua paul <yehoshua -dot- p -at- technicalwriting -dot- com>]

No I do magic, and I make sure that everyone I work with in my division,
and the neighboring divisions is aware of it. The magic is doing stuff that
they never thought of as possible with the tools we use, namely Word 2010.
This can be creating an A5 template in an RTL language, and then applying
it to one of our templates in under a day, or using rd fields to link
multiple word files, thus saving the need to copy-paste 600 pages into each
other, or just using the technical writer only macros to clean up a
document that the non-techy sales people who don't know how to use styles
produce. I make sure that they are fully aware that I am performing magic,
and amazingly enough they never ask me for my secrets.

Yehoshua Paul,
Community contributor and documentation expert,
www.technicalwriting.com

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 7:56 PM, Ken Poshedly <poshedly -at- bellsouth -dot- net>wrote:

> 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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