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Re: These Two Matters, Matters to Me!

Subject: Re: These Two Matters, Matters to Me!
From: David Tremblay <techwrit -at- mediom -dot- com>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2003 09:28:04 -0400

Ananda Ganesh wrote:

1. About a Ph.D. program

Techwriting is becoming really vertically oriented so better use your other formations and learn to write about it. Ph.D. is a more academic discipline while the market ask for professionals in various technology fields. If you already know how to write, just study how manuals, courseware and online help are actually done, and take techno courses. Also PhDs. are far more expensive so companies might be reluctant to hire them, as well as PhD is a very expensive diploma.
Finaly, doing a PhD's is exactly like being an athlete it takes a lot of discipline, a lot of time and, no it can't be done partialy unless you think that at least 50 hours of truly engaged work is not enough !
2. About Home work

Well, if you work in a software environnement you will have to for two reason : 1 ) it is an expected thing for a professional in the field 2) You'll need to understand the style life of the geeks in order to have their attention 3) Why having a life when you can have a work? (just kiding)

How you people manage? I solicit your tips.

Take a technology and make it your hobby, have a blog and write a lot (even if very few read you - just keep writing), do volonteer work, go study Object oriented UML design instead of writing about techwriting history, process or learning paterns during a PhD unless you want to teach yourself. Take other language courses, for example if I could write in english as well as I do it in french I could be much richer, information and language are your first weapons in the TW field.

Technical writing is just not technical because it writes about technology but it has technical thingies on its own, knowing VBA, XML, SQL queries, HTML and CSS is a frequent thing among the techwriter, but the first thing is to know how to write nice, small and efficient sentences that ought to be understood by very much Joe Average...

David












References:
These Two Matters, Matters to Me!: From: Ananda Ganesh

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