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I am in this situation. an engineer was doing the online help and other
website stuff. I was brought on as an intern ( to begin with I hope)
because I have a back ground and an expertise ( at least a good
understanding and the ability to learn) in doing the documentation. I have
no background in civil engineering ( mesh generation). I am learning
everything here.
Anyway, the guy who was doing the documentation did a decent job, but he is
a sub-project lead and has other things he is very skilled at. It made more
sense for a technical writer to do the documentation and let the engineer do
what he does best. We still work closely together to make sure that every
thing is accurate.
I think that not being a SME gives me an advantage. I am able to look at
the documentation from the prospective of the user. I know what would be
nice to be there to help me learn.
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The optimist fell ten stories.
At each window bar
He shouted to his friends:
"All right so far."
Unknown
-----Original Message-----
From: Smith, Martin [mailto:Martin -dot- Smith -at- mdx -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 2:38 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Frustrated
I'm not so sure that the engineers can't write argument is enough to build a
career upon these days.
I recently changed jobs and observed from reading job adds and interviewing
that many companies are hiring engineers and programmers with the
expectation that they will be writing documentation and developing on-line
help systems.
If the engineer/programmer possess solid writing, publishing, and help
authoring skills, who better to write the documentation than someone with
expert-level knowledge of the technology. In addition, an
engineer/programmer has the background knowledge necessary to frame the
documentation in the proper context and can add value to the documentation
by including the tips, tricks, and suggestions that only an expert would be
aware of.
As writers I think we really need to offer more than language skills alone.
Personally, I began my career as a technical writer and then acquired the
technical expertise that allows me to work as a software developer. Today I
am perfectly content to develop software along with the accompanying printed
and on-line documentation.
The more I learned about programming the more I realized that writing and
programming have much in common. Both require strong organizational skills,
attention to detail, logical thinking and reasoning ability, and strict
adherence to consistency, style, and syntax.
Interestingly, I have noticed that many programmers have a keen interest in
music--perhaps because of the many structural similarities between musical
composition and programming. Check out "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas
Hofstadter for an interdisciplinary study of baroque composition, natural
and artificial languages, mathematics, and drawings by M.C. Escher.
RoboHelp Studio maximizes your Help authoring power by combining
RoboHelp Office and RoboDemo, so you can easily create professional
Help systems that feature interactive tutorials and demos.
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