FW: A good grammar test? (Certifying colleagues)

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

(Second try; the first one bounced most impressively.)

Joanne Case wonders: <<I supervise 5 technical writers at a software
company. I'm looking for a good grammar/editing test for my current writers.
It will be part of an internal certification plan we're developing. Where
should I look?>>

"Certification" always scares me because it generally relies on arbitrary
tests and often starts with the wrong goals--disciplining some one,
excluding them from a club, and so on. If you're going to test your writers,
you're going to be treading on some potentially delicate egos. Make sure you
discuss the certification with them well in advance of giving the test, and
make sure they have time to learn the elements that you'll be testing. It's
unfair to spring the test upon them with no notice, which is likely to breed
resentment against you. Moreover, if you let them study the right elements
beforehand, they should all pass the test with flying colors, thereby
satisfying what I hope will be the actual goal of certification: helping the
writers to write better and improving the quality of the documentation. Once
everyone is certified to Level I, figure out some additional priorities,
call that Level II, then start the process of certifying them on that level.
And so ad infinitum...

To create a test, start with your in-house style guide, supplemented by a
discussion with your editors (if any). This is more effective than many
other tests because you're actually testing the writers on tasks that
they're supposed to be doing, and familiarity with the style guide will be
part of that work. Talking to your editors will help, because they can
identify the most important elements of the style guide that the writers are
failing to follow and other problems (e.g., dangling participles) that the
writers can't seem to master; these elements are things that you, the other
writers, or your editors are wasting a lot of time correcting.

Initially, pick common, recurring problems that are relatively simple to
learn how to solve. This lets the writers improve their writing in ways that
are meaningful to your work, and makes the initial certification relatively
easy, thereby ensuring that nobody gets too spooked by the process. Program
your people for success: If the goal is to help them improve, encourage them
by showing that they're capable of that improvement. When you subsequently
move on to a more difficult series of tests that provide additional
certification, they're already confident they can do it and willing to buy
into the certification process because they've already succeeded once.
Writers who become certified according to your tests are writing text that
follows the style guide and minimizes the amount of editing required.
Everyone wins from that result.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html

"I vowed [that] if I complained about things more than three times, I had to
do something about it."--Jon Shear

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