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> Perhaps there's no such thing as a "plain vanilla" technical writer. Until
> today, I hadn't even heard of that term. Truth be told, I think technical
> writers have to be very flexible and versatile in terms of learning new
> technologies all the time as part of furthering their careers.
The term was coined on the list in the course of the motivation discussion.
Thinking about it, I think it fails to capture the proper distinction. Tech
writers are not divided into plain and fancy. It seems to be far more the
case that they are divided into "technical writers" -- those who author
original content on technical subjects based on their knowledge of a field,
and "technical ghost writers", those who write documents for subject matter
experts because the subject matter expert can't or won't write them
themselves.
Perhaps this is the same distinction that Bonnie was trying to make between
"technical writers" and "technical authors".
In any case, these are both valuable occupations, but substantially
different in terms of the training, education, and aptitudes required, and,
I suspect, in terms of the compensation and prospects they offer. It would
certainly seem to be the case that the essential appeal of the technical
ghost writer is that they are cheaper than the expert whose work they
offload, but this would not be true of the technical writer.
It certainly seems clear that a technical ghost writer would need to be a
quick study who can pick up enough of a field to communicate with the expert
for whom they are ghostwriting. But no amount of quick study will enable you
to be a technical writer (in the restricted sense in which I am using it
here). That requires genuine depth of knowledge in the field.
I can see, however, that one might enter a field as a technical ghost writer
and, if you stay in it, learn enough over time to become a technical writer.
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Mark Baker
Stilo Corporation
1900 City Park Drive, Suite 504 , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J 1A3
Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com
Web: http://www.stilo.com
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