TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Regarding the stupidarse comments tech writers get on their review
documents, I heartily concur with those put forth by Janice Gelb (below)!!
It seems that engineers and marketing folks -- both higher up than us on
the food chain -- revel in making life miserable for those below. Sometimes
it's using a bulk of the time budgeted to a project so that those
downstream have to complete two weeks worth of work in a day or so;
sometimes it's demanding that you insert apostrophes or other punctuation
where you KNOW it shouldn't be because they know without their signature,
the doc won't get out and YOU'LL catch hell; and sometimes it's those
stupid questions to you, the tech writer.
Hell! Why ask in a review copy of a document if you're sure something is
correct? Of course you think it's correct, or else you would have consulted
with your subject matter expert to learn it before you wrote it!
Another little trick I've known some -- but not all engineers -- to play is
for them to tell you they are two projects down the road now and have no
time to meet with you to answer questions, so you should talk to their boss
(who is conveniently never around).
This is not to say all engineers and marketeers are like this. Rick
Pro.(name abbreviated here), a certain marketing rep with whom I worked at
Nordson was a really decent guy; he told the tech writers "Look, you guys
are the documentation experts and I assume you know your stuff." He knew
marketing and he knew the equipment, but said the engineers should catch
the nitty-gritty technical errors. I worked well with Rick. Too bad
neither of us is still there now.
There should be more like him.
Janice Gelb <janiceg -at- marvin -dot- eng -dot- sun -dot- com> on 04/26/2001 07:09:35 PM
Please respond to Janice Gelb <janiceg -at- marvin -dot- eng -dot- sun -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
cc: (bcc: Ken Poshedly/Parts/ProductSupport/GA/KFI)
Subject: Re: FW: Top 5 dumb comments Tech Writers r
In article 1 -at- si05 -dot- rsvl -dot- unisys -dot- com, no-spam -at- null -dot- dev (Rodney Copeland)
writes:
>
>1) ?
>2) NO!
>3) Wrong!!!
>4) Need more here
>5) Is this right?
>
This is precisely the reason that I try to push using a
database for technical review comments (and gave a paper
on this at STC a couple of years ago). Reviewers are
less likely to write such inane things in a database
than they are if they're just scribbling on the side
of a page
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 Conference East,
June 4-6, Baltimore, MD. Now covering Acrobat 5. Early registration deadline
April 27. http://www.pdfconference.com.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
