Re: Techwriting after the boom

[Michael West <mbwest -at- bigpond -dot- net -dot- au>]

Bruce Byfield wrote:

> Accounts of expeditions and of naturalist 
> activities were the popular non-fiction of the 18th and 19th century: a 
> form of entertainment, more often than not. If you read Richard Francis 
> Burton's accounts of travelling to Mecca, or in West Africa  (which are 
> among the classics of this kind of literature), you soon have to 
> conclude that conveying of accurate information wasn't the real point. 

You may be right about those examples, but for others--
Cook's voyages, Lewis & Clark's explorations -- there was
a great need for acccurate data -- meausurements, statistics,
demographics, linguistics -- about the regions explored. That 
these accounts were later fixed up and published for popular 
audiences should not distract us from recognizing their primary 
purpose as technical/scientific documents.


> If you compare the published works of Charles Darwin 
> or Thomas Huxley to their letters, there is not much doubt that the 
> published works were written almost entirely by them.

Yes, there are the Darwins and Huxleys: great scientists and great 
authors (recall I said that we could all think of exceptions). But even 
they had editors and assistants and designers engravers and typesetters. 
And for every pop science or technical book published today for the 
mass market, there is a staff of editors whose job it is to work with
the author and/or the manuscript to make a better book. The role 
of tech communicators in small publishing operations embedded in 
R&D houses and other enterprises is exactly analagous.

> >intervention
> >was required by people whose specialties were not in
> >the technical subject matter, but in the compilation,
> >design and production of books.
> >
> Sure. But publishing is not generally what is meant when people talk 
> about subject matter experts. The term refers to the contents, not to 
> the production of the finished product.

Yes, my point is precisely that -- that there has been
a clear distinction between subject matter experts and
publishing experts for many years. It is a not a new "concept".


> The ravages of desktop publishing are another (and no less interesting 
> matter). But, as I've said, that is the area of production, not content.

To the extent that desktop publishing made it possible
for would-be writers to bypass traditional editorial
processes, its ascendancy is related to our topic -- 
which as I understand it is the distinction between 
subject matter expertise and writing/editing/publishing expertise.

--
MW
Melbourne, Australia



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