RE: You're SUPPOSED to have good communication skills if you're a tech writer

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

Jan Henning wrote

> > They tend to
> > regard our writing skills as only contingently valuable, and only of
> > value
> > at all insofar as we can demonstrate that we can also understand their
> > machine and explain it to other people.
>
> The latter being a part of the writing skill... :-)

Well, not really. Most of the writing that makes our literate society work
involves little or no explaining. It is an exchange of information between
people who share a common understanding. So you can write effectively and
not be good at explaining. Similarly, there are people who are gifted at
explaining who never write. They explain in other ways. Writing and
explaining are distinct skills.

On the other hand, I am perfectly willing to allow that the defining
characteristic of a professional writer may be a combination of the common
skill of writing competent prose and the somewhat less common skill of
explaining things well. In fact, I have used that description myself in the
past. And given that the combination of two skills is likely to be rarer
than either one of them alone (and certainly not less rare), then the
combination of explaining and writing skills that make a professional writer
may fairly be said to be somewhat rare.

Still, both must be combined with some practical knowledge of something that
needs to be explained before they are of any commercial use.

---
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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