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--- Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com> wrote:
> More recently, I've seen the same thing in tech writers. One writer
> I met was terrified a the thought of a job where no previous style
> guide existed; she literally broke into tears and started shaking.
> Another one didn't quite cry, but came close, and complained loudly
> and bitterly about the responsibility. Yet another writer, told that
> part of the job would be to develop standards, disqualified herself
> in the middle of an interview.
>
> These people are exasparating, but I suppose that they're more to be
> pitied than anything else. I suspect that they have massive
> self-doubts and insecurity.
It is possible. Although I think it is something more sinister (and therefore
more interesting). I think tech-writing institutions, books, and schools are
feeding would-be writers the wrong messages. Or more appropriately, the message
that "yes, you must understand what you are documenting" is absent from most
tech writer classes/meetings/etc.
Thus these people show up for work on day one and are appalled that everything
they learned at University of STC was basically wrong or inconsequential.
That's why mentoring is so much better.
Maybe it is just the "fracturing" that we've debated before on this list. Tech
writing is fracturing into two distinct types: tool/writing monkeys and subject
experts. The tool monkeys hate the subject folks because we won't acknowledge
their tool skills, and the subject folks are too busy cashing checks and
getting their pet's food bowls gold plated.
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