TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
That's true. When surveyed they'll return comments such as
"the documents suck," but not know or care that one reason
why they may "suck" is poor sentence structure or spelling.
Usually, they'll be complaining about the fact that the
docs don't contain the information they need or are so
badly organized that it can't be easily found. Almost never
do I see docs criticized because of their bad sentence
structure, grammar or spelling, but I have seen docs with
all of these errors still rated highly, because their
authors knew the subject matter well enough to know what
information to include, what to exclude and where to put it.
I'd much rather deal with manuscripts by people who are bad
writers but technically adept; they're a lot easier to fix
than what's turned out by people who are the other way
around.
Gene Kim-Eng
------- Original Message -------
On
Mon, 8 Sep 2003 10:37:03 -0400 Mark Baker?wrote:
People who consume writing can tell good writing from bad writing. They may not be able to offer a cogent analysis of why it is bad, but they know bad when they read it.