Re: The Problem with STC

[Tom Murrell <trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

It is rare--I am tempted to say it has never happened--that I rise to
agree with Andrew Plato rather than one of his critics. However, in
this case, I think Andrew is right. Perhaps my feeling that knowing the
more formal aspects of communications doctrine is less important than
knowing what you are communicating ABOUT comes from the fact that I've
not formally studied technical communication at all.

I came to technical writing from academia where I had gotten a BA and
an MA in English Literature while learning to write a fair schtick.
Before that I was a programmer in a company that sold systems for
complex process controls to various industries. Before that I was a
programmer involved with, among other things, some of the earliest
smart bomb technology in the Air Force.

And, frankly, I had no formal training for the kind of programming I
was doing either. I had to learn about what I was programming; applying
the particular language or the particular operating environment was
less important than understanding the what and why of how the programs
themselves were to operate. Then I begin doing technical documentation
and lo and behold, what I know about writing as a discipline is less
important than my ability to learn enough about what I'm writing that I
can adequately explain it to my audience.

Whenever I am forced to sit down with the instructions for putting
something together (or operating a VCR, just to name one thing), I
quickly come up against some example that screams at me that the writer
of these instructions never tried to DO them him/her self. Otherwise
those instructions would NOT be written that stupidly.

I have been wrong so many times that once more would not be a big deal,
but I think that is what AP is really arguing for: that writers
understand what they are writing about at least as much as they
understand who they are writing for. He certainly is not arguing
against understanding Communication Theory and various implementations
thereof. But, if you're writing about products that involve networks,
doesn't it make sense to actually understand what a network is?

Tom Murrell
Lead Technical Writer
Alliance Data Systems
Columbus, Ohio
mailto:trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com
Personal Web Page - http://home.columbus.rr.com/murrell/

--- Michael West <mike -dot- west -at- oz -dot- quest -dot- com> wrote:
> Andrew Plato writes:
> 
> >There is just a lot of poor communicators out there. 
> 
> I can hardly improve on that remark, though it is
> tempting to try.
> 
> Mr Plato's views and mine are almost diametrically 
> opposed. He believes that detailed technical
> knowledge is an "infinitely" more important element 
> in technical communications than core communications 

=====
Tom Murrell
Lead Technical Writer
Alliance Data Systems
Columbus, Ohio
mailto:trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com
Personal Web Page - http://home.columbus.rr.com/murrell/

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