Dividing the Tech writer job

[Richard Cook <Cook-Richard -at- CDSSOFTWARE -dot- COM>]

Melissa,

In recent years the need for typists has declined greatly. In a company
I worked for recently, typists were eliminated completely. A lot of
people typed, but all of them had some other primary responsibility.

A doc department needs somebody to do proofreading and minor editing. In
my experience, one person like this can support maybe 4-6 writers
(depending on a lot of things). It's really great if that person can be
proficient enough in your pub tools to make corrections directly, and
take care of last minute formatting, TOC generation, etc. But as others
have mentioned, this person is not a *writer*.

I recommend you structure your new department to meet your workload with
writers, editors, graphics/layout, [forgive me if I've left anyone out]
and a proofreader/typist if you want. If one of these two fits in that
role, great. If one of them wants to become a tech writer and has the
aptitude, go for it.

Trying to create a *new* department by renaming and reorganizing
existing people and skills isn't going to cut it. If the company doesn't
have any use for people who can do no more than type, then what?

Richard Cook
CDS Software, Inc.
Tucson, AZ

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