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Re: Important Stuff They Don't Teach In Tech Writing School
Subject:Re: Important Stuff They Don't Teach In Tech Writing School From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 27 Aug 2004 10:48:29 -0700
"Andrew Plato" <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote...
>
> No. Good writing is not about activism for users.
Good catch, I missed that one...
As a technical writer you are a part of the product development team.
As such, your responsibility is to support the successful completion,
release and support of the product by ensuring that the necessary
information is provided for the end user to successfully use the product
for its advertised purpose with a minimal impact on your company's
product support resources. What this amounts to is providing the
user with just enough information, not giving away the store by
handing over company proprietary data because you think the user
will find it useful or interesting and getting the documents done in time
to deliver with the completed product. In order to do this, you need
to know what the user knows, what the user does *not* know,
what the user needs to know and what the user does *not* need to
know. Knowing what the user may *want* or *like* to know may
be of some value, but it better not be what's driving your efforts to
document a product that is supposed to ship on time and make a
profit for the company.
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