RE: RE: Motivation and satisfaction in technical writing

["GeneK" <gene -at- genek -dot- com>]

I think that varies depending on the industry you're in.
In my original field (mechanical/aircraft/aerospace),
50 years ago technical writers were relatively low-paid
folks who were either entry-level engineers or older 
engineers on a path toward retirement who had the writing 
skills to clean up drafts written by the engineers doing 
product and service development; English or journalism
graduates were nowhere to be seen.  To be sure, many
developers weren't terribly practiced at writing, or 
management decided our time was better spent on the
engineering work rather than the writing when writers 
were so much cheaper than engineers, but most of us could
hammer out a decent draft if the situation required it.  
Technical writing as a profession in which one could earn 
income comparable to a developer's didn't happen in that
industry until the 80's, which was about the same time we 
began to hear cries of anguish about the declining reading 
and writing skills of students in almost all fields of 
study.  I am told that it is now possible to get a degree
in engineering without having to take the two years of
English, one year of history and one year of humanities
electives I had to take to get my BSME.

Gene Kim-Eng


------- Original Message -------
On
Wed, 25 Jun 2003 12:18:36 -0700 Anita Legsdin?wrote:


As for the comment below: isn't that where we started, about 50 or so
years ago? The way the story was told to me was that technical writing
arose as a profession because engineers were (at that time) such lousy
writers. I remember courses in college with a title like "English for
Engineers," as if it were any different than the English the rest of us
used.


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