Author, author - WAS Tech Writing Skills, College Degrees, Market able Skills

["Goldstein, Dan" <DGoldstein -at- DeusTech -dot- com>]

Don't take the bait... don't take the bait... <lunge>

Let's say you start a job *without* professional background in the technical
material to be documented, learn it on the job, and write entirely new
material -- spec sheets, validation protocols, end-user docs, etc. Are you
an "author" or a "tool monkey"?

Based on previous TECHWR-L threads, I suspect that many members of this list
have worked in the manner I describe above.

Dan Goldstein

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Plato 
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2003 1:15 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Tech Writing Skills, College Degrees, Marketable Skills

<snip>
Well, if you're going to get that high-level, then I would say there are
really
two disciplines:
- Authoring: Writing new material
- Editing: Fixing up other people's material. 
This is, in my mind, the real difference. Most of the "technical
communicators"
or "technical writers" out there are merely repairing, cleaning up, or
designing other people's work. That requires a totally different set of
skills
than sitting down with a blank piece of paper and writing something from
scratch. 
</snip>


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