RE: Important Stuff They Don't Teach In Tech Writing School Was Re: School vs experience...

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Tony Markos sez:

> IMPORTANT STUFF THEY DON'T TEACH YOU IN TECH WRITER
> SCHOOL:
> 
>   *  Good technical communications is so simple and
> straight forward, they will wonder what took you so
> long.  (This is a major reason for the lack of good
> technical communications.)

I've been fortunate enough to have been employed in 
companies where there were a lot of engineers with 
English as a second (third... fourth) language, so 
I generally haven't met that issue -- though I know 
it's out there.
 
>   *  Management's Philosophy: "We don't want our
> technical communications to be too clear; we make most
> of our money off of training."

Well, I've encountered the related "we make most of 
our money off support calls", but then the company 
wants good documentation for the support people, so 
it's just a different audience but the need is still 
there.
 
>   *  There is no correlation at all between good
> grammar and good technical communications.

Gimme a URL, please, to some top-notch (i.e., effective 
and usable) documentation that's riddled with slipshod 
grammar and usage.  I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm 
just saying. . .  :-)

I've seen plenty of examples of nicely grammatical stuff 
that wasn't very good technically or was difficult to 
navigate. I haven't seen any grammar-optional documents 
or help that nevertheless was a model of technical 
accuracy and usability. I'd like to see some. It might 
be interesting to see the separation in action. Educational, 
I'd bet.  FWIW, my experience has been that the grammar-
optional stuff or the stuff written/translated badly from 
another language has generally been on the low end of the 
usability spectrum, but I'm prepared to be enlightened. 
Eager, in fact.

Thanks,

Kevin  (standing by, in Ottawa)

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