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Subject:Re: Improving colleagues' writing skills From:Damien_Braniff -at- pac -dot- co -dot- uk To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:Mon, 6 Dec 1999 09:23:29 +0000
Lean,
There has always been (well as long as I've been writing!) two distinction camps
on the issue of writing skills:
there are those who say odd typos, grammatical errors etc create a really bad
impression of the product/company - if they're this careless with the lit,
what's the product like?
Who cares about a few typos etc as long as the information is correct.
You talk about checking the work of your writers and this should, I feel, be
standard practice wherever possible. Ideally you should NEVER check your own
work (well at least not only you), after all, you KNOW what you've written
regardless of what actually appears on the page! If there is only you, try and
leave a few days between writing and checking - it's quite a amazing what you
find sometimes; did I reall write that??
If you work in a "quality" environment (ISO 9000 etc) perhaps you could push
for a procedure that states what checking should be done - technical, style,
etc.