RE: What to look for in a technical editor

["Mark Baker" <mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com>]

France Baril wrote:

> Writers and editors who do not want to learn the internal operations of
> everything cannot conceive that their technical audience is not
> like them in
> this respect. It is this failure of imagination, not poor language skills
> that make them (often) poor communicators.

Absolutely true. The needs and interests of audiences vary widely and the
writer needs to be able to imagine what it is like to be each particular
type of user. And they very often fail, either for lack of imagination, or
for lack of sufficient knowledge of the audience's tasks and tools to make
the act of imagination possible.

It should be noted, by the way, that user analysis, while all well and good,
is no substitute for being able to imagine your audience, and that require
gaining real knowledge of you audience's tasks and tools.
---
Mark Baker
Senior Technical Writer
Stilo Corporation
1900 City Park Drive, Suite 504 , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J 1A3
Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com
Web: http://www.stilo.com

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