Re: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing"

[Rick Lippincott <rjl6955 -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Robert Lauriston said:

>In the steam era, mechanical engineers would write their own notes and
>most technical information was transmitted informally. You can find
>examples of technical writing as far back as writing goes, but
>technical writing didn't exist as a profession until WWII, around the
>ame time as software development.

Ah. Good to know.

So...now I'm curious. Who wrote all these pre-WW2 aircraft flight and
maintenance manuals that I've come across over the years? Or the
turn-of-the-last-century locomotive operating manuals?

Or is it that you're saying that because they didn't consider it a
"profession," they weren't really tech writers?

Because, if you are, I disagree.

--Rick Lippincott



On 3/22/16, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com> wrote:
> It's a seller's market in the Silicon Valley / San Francisco area where I
> work.
>
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 4:28 PM, Rick Lippincott <rjl6955 -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
>> It's obvious from the first paragraph that the author of the article
>> believes that "software technical writing = technical writing." Well,
>> for anyone in that mindset, yeah the profession may be dying. At the
>> very least, it's getting to be a lot smaller.
>
> In the steam era, mechanical engineers would write their own notes and
> most technical information was transmitted informally. You can find
> examples of technical writing as far back as writing goes, but
> technical writing didn't exist as a profession until WWII, around the
> same time as software development.
>
>> 150 years ago, technical writers probably were documenting steam
>> engines, and they probably went into a panic when the simpler and
>> easier-to-maintain internal combustion engine came along. The field
>> didn't die then, it's not going to die now.
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