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Subject:RE: Quality of source material from Development From:Iggy <iggy_1996dp -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 13 Dec 2001 06:14:05 -0800 (PST)
> Yes, Andrew, some writers are less technical than
> you are.
> Whether they should *all* be as technical as you are
> is a matter of debate.
That's not Andrew's point. His point is that the
writers should be as technical as they need to be.
They don't need to know what Andrew knows, they need
to know what they have to know in order to do their
job, which is NOT just to write manuals, but rather to
understand the industry, technology, its use, and the
product and relay this information as articulately and
as accurately as possible. Therefore, if your company
creates software that interacts with various
infrastructures or enterprise solutions via specific
protocols, then you need to know about these systems
and these protocols. Plain and simple. If you need to
explain to people how to do something at a very
granular level, then you NEED to understand at that
level. You cannot rely on developers for all the info
- they work at the granular level, so they are not
always thinking about the grand scope of the product.
All they are concerned with is getting X to work with
Y as efficiently as possible. It's YOUR job as a
TECHNICAL WRITER to understand both the big picture
and the granular details and tie the two together in
an understandable and accurate manner.
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