Re: Writers first

[Angela Howard <angela -at- SB -dot- AOL -dot- COM>]

On Sat, 5 Oct 1996 16:37:27 PDT, Robert Plamondon <robert -at- PLAMONDON -dot- COM> said:

>What I *do* believe is that writing
>lucid, organized prose requires the desire to improve and a great deal
>of practice.  Few engineers score even 50% on those requirements.  But
>engineers are at least as trainable as, say, bears.  A few zaps of the
>old cattle prod for screwing up, a few treats for shambling through the
>dance more or less correctly, and we'd turn them into ballerinas in
>no time.

Learning most things requires the desire to improve and a great deal of
practice.  Engineers -- good ones, anyway -- score quite highly on those
requirements for the skills they chose to make their life's work.

I think (or at least I hope) that comments such as the above are made at
least partially tongue in cheek.  I am an engineer-turned-writer, and I've
heard many such comments on this list, but they get a little old after a
while.  I think if you joined an engineering list to learn more about
something you were writing about, and you heard comments like "Few writers
can understand this stuff, but maybe a few zaps of the cattle prod, and we
could get them to tell the difference between a mutex and a semaphore", it
would get a little old for you, too.


____________________________________

 Angela M. Howard
 Technical Writing and Indexing
 angela -at- sb -dot- aol -dot- com
 (805)882-2350 x126
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