Re: You're SUPPOSED to have good communication skills if you're a tech writer
Are you sure that there are many people (on this list) that think
writing skills are enough?
My comments weren't just (or even mostly) based on what people have posted on this list. They were also based on local observations, and the fact that I have had several contracts in which I cleaned up after another writer. Writing ability was not the problem in any of these cases. All were written in perfectly intelligible English. However, all of them suffered a lack of understanding of the subject. This lack was evident not only in the obsolete and unverified information, but in the turns of phrasing and ambiguous, potentially misleading statements that were made.
What's more, my personal experience coincides well with the widespread prejudice among programmers that technical writers don't know their subject. This assumption irritates me to no end, but I doubt it would be so common if it wasn't based partly on experience.
People who disagree with the contention "Everybody can write, only technical skils
count." do not necessarily claim that "Technical skills are
unimportant, only writing skills count."
True enough. But, then, since I never claimed otherwise, I don't feel obliged to counter.
--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7177
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield
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and allege a unique sentience divided us;
evolution would alow our parallel minds to meet
if love alone could not."
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Re: You're SUPPOSED to have good communication skills if you're a tech writer: From: Jan Henning
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