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Subject:Re: Learning from others' manuals From:Karen Field <KarenF -at- TRITECH -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 21 Oct 1998 10:02:42 -0700
I've actually had people ask me, "Do you just [document software] because it
pays better than being a 'real' writer?" And I always say "No," because, the
more I study manuals and other forms of software documentation, the more I
realize that tech writing really is an art. We are user adovcates, and there
is an intricacy and--dare I say it?--a *science" to telling someoone how to
do something. I'm up for tinkering with a program before I pick up a manual
as much as the next person, but the writer who said "REAL tech writers don't
read the manual" obviously had no grasp of the fun of learning a program the
hard way AND studying the craft of tech writing to make it easy for the next
person (the user) to learn the program the easy way.
Dismounting my soapbox now...
Karen Field
Technical Writer, Editor, and Indexer
San Diego, CA
