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Subject:RE: Help - my consultants cannot write! From:"Michael West" <mike -dot- west -at- bigpond -dot- com> To:"'Porrello, Leonard'" <lporrello -at- illumina -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:54:13 +1100
Is this really about "highly cultured" and "highly literate"? To me it's
about the basic ability to create clear sentences from clear ideas, and to
collect those sentences into well-organized paragraphs that have a clear
purpose and a suitable topic sentence, and to arrange those paragraphs into
a simple unitary form that has a clear statement of purpose, a clear
argument, and a suitable conclusion.
This is not high culture; it's basic competence in written language. It
needn't be brilliant, clever, insightful, creative, amazing, dazzling, or
otherwise wunderbar. It need only be clear, communicative and relevant to
the needs of the audience and the situation. That's what well-educated
people do -- or used to do anyway -- whatever their specialty. It used to be
what grammar schools taught, along with numeracy and perhaps a bit of
hand-me-down, pre-digested "history".
However, in this case I agree with the recommendations you make in your
final paragraph below.
--
Mike West
-----Original Message-----
From: Porrello, Leonard [mailto:lporrello -at- illumina -dot- com]
Sent: Tuesday, 11 October 2011 9:59 AM
To: 'John Allred'
Cc: Michael West; Edwin Skau; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Help - my consultants cannot write!
I think good mechanics are highly educated, just generally not in
humanities. Most of them would probably be first to admit that mechanics
generally do not write well. It's not that they couldn't learn but a
question of why they would want to. If someone becomes a mechanic, it
probably isn't because he loves science and the arts. The idea of a highly
cultured and highly literate mechanic is mostly a product of American folk
mythology and Hollywood. I would wager that a few do exist, but I have never
met one. Have you?
I think of the question of the value of education in terms of the 10,000
hour rule. What subjects are worth 10,000 hours?
Does it take 10,000 hours to be a mathematician, physicist, physician, or
literary critic? At least. How about to be a master mechanic? I would
suppose so. Does it take 10,000 hours to _master_ writing in your native
language. Again, I think so, and I would add that most people never achieve
mastery. After you've achieved competence as a writer (which would arguably
take less than 10,000 hours), does it take 10,000 to become a technical
writer? Not in my experience. (Of course, if you have no talent, you can
spend your 10,000 hours and still suck.) I wonder, if you added the amount
of time it takes to learn how to write to the amount of time it takes to
learn the writing and technical skills necessary to do technical writing,
would it add up to 10,000 hours? I think so.
The problem Plato may be facing is that he has employees who have spent
10,000 hours on their specialty but don't have the will or the bandwidth to
spend the time it would take to become decent writers. They spend their time
at work doing work to make the company profitable, they have lives outside
of work, and they aren't interested in becoming better writers. They
perceive that the ROI of becoming better writers is negligible. In this,
Plato (if you are still reading), may be the solution to your problem. In
the short term, use a template or employ an editor to demonstrate what you
expect, and offer one-time bonuses to analysts who meet your expectations as
writers. In the long run, you can have two tiers of analysts, those who can
write and those for whom you need a editor. Obviously, the ones that can
write will have a "senior" title and earn more than those who cannot.
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