Re: Thoughts on Working With Developers (long)

[Marci Abels <mabels -at- SKYJACKINC -dot- COM>]

Well, it may not be a matter of how rough the draft is when you send it out. It may, instead, be a matter of what the SME considers appropriate. I've had drafts come back to me with corrections for grammar that would make some of you wince (they certainly had that effect on me). Some SMEs (not all, mind you) think that commas should be scattered liberally throughout a document, that random capitalization of words is appropriate, and that sentences of 65 words are perfectly readable. If I tell my SME to focus on the technical content and not on the punctuation, grammar, or sentence structure, then I reduce the arguments I might have over isues that really are better left to the writer. 

You are right, if a document goes out for technical review full of grammatical errors, the writer has failed in his or her duty to the reviewer. But when an engineer wants to come and argue the use of affect and effect, or where to place a comma, well, that's not what the technical reviewer should be looking for. Just IMHO

Marci Abels
Technical Writer, Skyjack, Inc.
http://www.skyjackinc.com/frame.html

-----Original Message-----
From:   Jill Burgchardt [SMTP:jburgcha -at- pestilence -dot- itc -dot- nrcs -dot- usda -dot- gov]

Technical edits may be what we need from them, but it does make me wonder what
kind of drafts people are expecting their SMEs to read.  Typos and grammatical
errors sometimes creep into the drafts I give my SMEs.  However, I try to get
rid of them as much as possible before reviews.

(snip) 

I'm curious, how "rough" do most people consider okay when they're giving an SME
a document?

Jill Burgchardt
jburgcha -at- pestilence -dot- itc -dot- nrcs -dot- usda -dot- gov

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000