RE: techwriting style vs press release

["Porrello, Leonard" <lporrello -at- illumina -dot- com>]

To say that the auto repair/ballet analogy fails miserably would be an understatement. The statement reminds me of when an Ag student in a composition class I was teaching at Cal Poly SLO baldly claimed that Virginia Woolf was not employing metaphor in her short story, "The Death of The Moth."

A better analogy would be, saying that tech writers should study poetry is like saying that wide-end receivers should study ballet. (By the way, http://www.livestrong.com/article/524594-can-ballet-lessons-improve-your-football-skills/). Poetry does for your writing what ballet does do for your strength, flexibility, agility, and body-awareness.


From: Gene Kim-Eng [mailto:techwr -at- genek -dot- com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 11:59 AM
To: Lynne Wright
Cc: Porrello, Leonard; Combs, Richard; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: techwriting style vs press release

OTOH, if you're a ballet dancer and you know something about auto mechanics, it's a lot easier to avoid getting taken by an unscrupulous repair shop.  And a mechanic might enjoy an evening at the ballet more by knowing something about it.

There is a difference between "not a requirement to know" and "shouldn't know."

Gene Kim-Eng


On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Lynne Wright <Lynne -dot- Wright -at- tiburoninc -dot- com<mailto:Lynne -dot- Wright -at- tiburoninc -dot- com>> wrote:
To say that tech writers should be taught poetry is like saying that mechanics should learn ballet.

Both disciplines involve words, but that's all they have in common.

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