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Subject:RE: A sobering encounter (So now what?) From:"Van Laan, Krista" <KVanlaan -at- verisign -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 4 Dec 2002 12:45:39 -0800
Barb Einarsen said:
> Understand I'm not commenting on the Content versus Style issue.
> Frankly, both are key skills required by technical writers. Let me
> define what I mean by those terms:
>
> Content meaning the ability to parse out important
> information from web
> searches, specifications, marketing materials, SME interviews, and
> product use, as well as the ability to learn new technologies very
> quickly (almost by osmosis; definitely not by rote).
>
> Style meaning the ability to create useful information and
> present it in
> a consistent, clear, usable, and thoughtful manner.
Right. Yes, content must be correct and complete, and
I think the completeness is where the tech writer can do a lot.
"Correct content" is not enough if you don't gather *all* the content
needed and present it in a way that makes sense. (Copy/pasting a
functional spec and a piece of another manual may be technically
correct but leaves out a lot of context and continuity.)
A good tech writer has the big picture, and needs to gather a lot
of information, maybe more than he or she'll need, to produce
a good document. I find that many writers make the mistake of thinking
a single person such as a developer is their only source
of information, when they
should also be getting input from marketing, installation,
tech support, product management, and all those places Barb lists
above.
Krista
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