Re: What do you want to be called?

[jane <judydh -at- TOTAL -dot- NET>]

Hi Lynn

Get me to *talk* about a technology in any sort of depth, and I start to
fumble and mix my acronyms and end up looking like the blonde that I am.  It
does not help me look good to the macho-man programmers with whom I have to
work (sure, they're nice, but...). On the other hand, I get to ask all sorts
of dumb and not-so-dumb questions to get the information from them.  The
technical communication is flowing only one way: towards me. When I
communicate technical info, it is exclusively one-way as well:  through the
written word.

As for people changing "tech writer" to "tech communicator", I think that
the motivation is out of fear that we are being perceived as typists and
pre-press technicians. I suppose the logic is that by mystifying what we do,
the more control we have on their perceptions of us. The only way that this
could actually be close to the truth would be due to the absolute lack of,
er, perception by other tech worker types. You know, people who haven't read
a book in five years that didn't have acronyms as its main characters.
People who are literal-minded but sometimes not quite literal enough. Funny,
they also think that the person who wrote the book would be *just like
them.*

So obviously, I prefer the term technical WRITER, because unperceiving
people are enormously pandered to. Until I do more than write, I'm a writer.
Up theirs with anything else they think.

BTW, in England, the common term is Technical Author.

Cheerio,

Jane

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