RE: Applying On-Line

["Ehr, Meg" <Meg -dot- Ehr -at- smartworks -dot- com>]

Here's my view:

Styles are good. Styles make my life easier. And yes, I have developed an
annoying tendency to twitch when I have to rework a doc that doesn't use
styles. I'm not about to argue against the value of styles in tech writing.

However, if every potential employer round-filed (or delete-foldered)
resumes that didn't use styles, I never would have been hired as a TW. 


That brings me to a serious question. If we agree that proper use of styles
is vital to success as a TW, how many of you knew that when you were looking
for your *first* TW job? If you did, how did you find out?


If I didn't read this group, I might never have learned that using styles is
*expected* in TW. I rarely used styles before becoming a "real" TW, and
certainly didn't learn a thing about them in my TW classes. After years of
experience with Word -- some of it advanced, *all* of it self-taught -- I
knew what styles were and how to use them, but I just didn't bother. Then
again, I was usually producing one-off docs without much formatting, so I
was able to get my job done with hand-formatting. Did that make me a bad
writer? Did that alone mean I was tool-ignorant and tool-phobic? Nope --
that just made me normal. 

The simple fact is that, although one could argue that most experienced TWs
use styles religiously, most Word users probably don't. It's not because
they're clueless or change-resistant. It's because most Word users -- even
those who can use many advanced features -- are self-taught. People don't
use styles because they've never *needed* them to get a job done -- which,
after all, is all most users are trying to do. Regardless of how much more
efficient users *could* be if they used styles, unless something happens to
make them see that value, they probably will continue to hand-format in
Normal.


How do newer TWs -- especially those who don't read this list* -- learn that
they should use styles? It could be taught in TW programs (and maybe some
programs do so), but a lot of TWs transition from other fields without
formal TW education. It's easy to learn on the job, but if you can't get the
job without knowing styles, where does that put you? 

For those who look for style use, do you consider it a core qualification
for that first TW gig, or is it something that can be learned so easily that
you'd cut a newbie some slack? This assumes that you hire new TWs, though,
which may not be the case in your shops.


Meg Ehr

*which, of course, they should be doing anyway

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