RE: What is our art?

[jgarison -at- ide -dot- com]

I explain my job as a technical writer by saying that I get to be Arthur
Conan Doyle for a living. I spend half my time as Sherlock Holmes - chasing
down clues, ferreting out information, trying to piece the various puzzle
shapes together into a cogent whole. Then I get to spend the other half of
my time as Dr. Watson - writing it all up for the edification of others.

My 2¢,

John



-----Original Message-----
From: Sue Ellen Adkins [mailto:sea -at- best -dot- com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2002 4:39 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: What is our art?


I've often described tech writing as being a teacher who must explain 
rapidly-changing, complicated information and provide answers to 
unasked questions.

sue ellen

At 5:05 PM +0000 2/19/02, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:
>This talk of annoying recruiters has got me thinking about what we
>writers do.  It's obvious that recruiters don't understand it since
>they think in terms of tools: Word, Visio, Frame, Robohelp.  Yet a
>guru of all those tools isn't necessarily a good tech writer.
>
>So what is it that we do?  What are the skills and how do you get them
>across to non-TRs?
>
>My first thought on this is that we're explainers, translators even.
>We take the time to get our heads around complex ideas that are poorly
>explained and make them easier to understand.
>
>--
>Rev Simon Rumble <simon -at- rumble -dot- net>
>www.rumble.net


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