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My stock response is
"<Fingers crossed behind back> Sure you could do the procedures </>. But I'm
faster because that's what I do all day. And it's more cost effective for
you to spend your time doing engineer stuff."
<twriter01 -at- mindspring -dot- com> wrote in message news:204306 -at- techwr-l -dot- -dot- -dot-
>
> Hello all. I just experienced a situation, which I'm sure some of you must
> have experienced before. I'm writing it now to sort of exhale. I just got
> in a heated discussion, debate, what not, about the purpose or necessity
> of a technical writer--at least that's what I think we were discussing.
> Anyway, I work in manufacturing and one of my main roles is to revise and
> re-write production procedures. My co-worker expressed that most R&D
> scientists can write good procedures themselves, because they had to have
> been able to write a good thesis for their masters or what have you. She
> concluded that if they were able to write a good thesis, they would be
> able to write a simple procedure. But, I argued if that were true, why was
> I hired to re-write the procedure R&D originated? She answered with,
> "Because they wrote it a long time ago, and no one has udpated them." But
> I told her that even newer procedures are coming over to mfg. with
> mistakes and such. She replied with, "Yeah, that's because they don't know
> the manufacturing environment and write mistakes, but they don't have the
> time to come down and watch the process." I said that was exactly my
> point. They (R&D) doesn't take into account the different environment that
> manufacturing is. The whole conversation just made my temp. rise. I felt
> like that old cliche, "Anyone can be a tech writer, they just fix grammar
> and formatting." Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
>
>
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