Re: Has technical writing fallen from grace?

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

There was a brief period of time in which anyone with some writing 
ability and the ability to comprehend some relatively low-level tech and 
explain it to the "unwashed masses" could obtain work as a technical 
writer at pretty good rates.  Those days have ended, and growth and 
advancement within the profession now requires the ability to comprehend 
- and in many cases, create and use - increasingly more complex tech, 
the ability to sort and understand the needs and expectations of users 
of differing levels and and organize the delivery of information about 
that tech to those different users.  In other words, the boom is over 
and things are back to the way they were before the dotcom era.

However, there will always be some jobs to be had writing things for the 
"unwashed masses." Like the instructions for the frozen meal I had for 
dinner last night that began with "Step One: Remove bowl from box."

Gene Kim-Eng


On 10/25/2014 8:47 AM, Craig Cardimon wrote: