Re: Why marketing should make the user manuals

[elecimag -at- att -dot- net]

Yes, it has gotten worse. Two issues; I had an interview for a full time technical writer position yesterday and I was astonished that the interviewer knew so little about Adobe, Apple and publishng in general. Since I only joined the is group yesterday and wish I had found it earlier, has anyone raised the issue of why I can only find contracted work, not full time. Has technical writing reached a stage where all we do is go into a company, fix all the Microsoft word documentation and end the gig? I quit building websites since that is mainly contracted out to low bidders. Thanks for all the tech tips. Are there any users of Adobe Creative Suite in the group? 


Marketing and Technical Consultant


-------------- Original message from "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>: -------------- 


> It's actually worse than that. The "ease" with which writers can 
> now *sort of* do the work of illustrators, page layout designers 
> and typesetters has resulted in writers being REQUIRED to do 
> it, and the result has been that many people in these fields have 
> seen their livelihoods dry up while the quality of documentation 
> has fallen due to writers having to divert time away from the 
> important tasks of researching the products they document to 
> do the production work formerly done with better results by 
> others. 
> 
> Gene Kim-Eng 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Susan Hogarth" 
> 
> > At an auction, I came across a beautiful old 16mm projector. Didn't 
> > buy it, because our house is too cluttered already, but the manual 
> > alone was almost worth the price it went for (around $20, I think). It 
> > was -lovely- - slick B/W pages with -wonderful- drawings and diagrams 
> > and beautifully written. The layout was beautiful - more polished than 
> > many books of the period (1950s, I think). I'm not a luddite, but I 
> > wonder sometimes if word processors and layout software have just 
> > enabled people to do things sloppily with more ease... 
> 
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