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Subject:RE: What Are Writing Skills? From:"Sharon Burton" <sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 10 Mar 2005 18:03:27 -0800
The engineer may have been a very good one, Tony. It may also be that he was
a bad information designer and writer. Being a good engineer is independent
of writing and information design skills. These are different skills sets
and are not always found in the same body. You can be a great engineer and
know nothing about information design or writing a logical structure. I have
known brilliant engineers who could not logically write their way out of a
box. It wasn't what they did. They made things.
You really seem to think all engineers sit around all day asking what the
users want. I'm telling you, they often don't. Typically, EEs are especially
not that interested in users - they like technology for the sake of
technology. As I have said before - we want engineers to do what they do
best - think of things and how to make them happen so other people can
figure out what it's good for. And the very best engineers do this, the
great minds, the ones who win awards and international recognition.
Please, Tony, stop assuming that anyone who does even a good systems
analysis is set to produce excellent documentation. It's a fallacy. It's not
true. It's like saying anyone who can do calculus is set to be a EE. It's
just not the case.
sharon
Sharon Burton
CEO, Anthrobytes Consulting
951-369-8590
www.anthrobytes.com
President of IESTC
-----Original Message-----
Al:
If your engineer friend is a "hack" of a writer, he is
a "hack" of an engineer. Nobody, if they are trying
to produce quality work, changes mindsets going from
one deliverable to another.
Also, technical communications are artifacts, and all
effective artifacts are highly engineered (i.e.,
developed using, to the required degree, formal
analysis and design methods).
Tony Markos
Show Me Your DFDs
--- Al Geist <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com> wrote:
>
> I know an engineer who thinks he's also a great
> technical writer. .... The end result was the
> engineer wrote and
> edited his own material, published it in print and
> to the web, and
> nobody used it because it was garbage. Ironically,
> it was only after a
> real technical writer joined the company and was
> able to work his magic,
> did people (management and customers alike) realized
> that their
> musician/comedian/engineer was nothing more than a
> hack writer whose
> arrogance didn't match his abilities.
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