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Re: Damnit Jim, I'm a technical writer, not a writer!
Subject:Re: Damnit Jim, I'm a technical writer, not a writer! From:kcronin -at- daleen -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 9 Jul 2001 12:08:27 -0700
Bill wrote:
> a technical writer's main job (as I view it) is to
> understand, and then explain.
Well put. I doubt ANYBODY on this list would disagree.
Bill also wrote:
> if you can answer your questions with "the
> spec says X and I've found X to be true with exception to conditions Y and
> Z" or "I've tested this and found this to be correct", you're going a fine
> job.
I agree with this too, and feel that this is what PRODUCT knowledge is. An
understanding of what the product does, and the underlying business logic
of the product. And you hit on something crucial: TESTING. Testing is an
integral part of this, and requires more than blanket acceptance of what
SMEs tell you.
But I still don't see why I need to also have a programmer's skill set.
I DO need to be able to converse intelligently with developers, but how
deep do you have to go? Do we also need to delve into the assembly
language created by whatever development tools the programmers use? At
some point, I think enough is enough.
I see many tech-writers who do not understand the real-world context in
which the products they document are used. To me, this is a much greater
travesty than not knowing how to write multi-threaded apps. (For that
matter, I've also seen plenty of DEVELOPERS who tend to work in that sort
of vacuum, too; seemingly unaware of how the real world uses their
product, and/or only familiar with the specific module they're coding.
Very scary.)
It seems like a lot of TWs are trying hard to "legitimize" themselves in
the eyes of others, and that learning code is the main step they're taking
to do so. (Presumably so you can walk up to a programmer and say "How
'bout them subroutines?" in a chatty and confident manner...)
I offer that writing comprehensive, helpful instructions that demonstrate
a thorough working knowledge of the product is the most powerful
"legitimizer" of all. After all, that's what WE get paid to do. And most
programmers or other SMEs either can't do that, or wouldn't want to.
I don't think less of an SME who is not familiar with the nuances of a
FrameMaker template, or who doesn't religiously use styles in Word. And
I'll not feel guilty about being unfamiliar with the ever-popular
"fprintf(urt, "%f.6 %s " , dr, (i=0;1+%r\d;++i));" statement.
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