Re: Ethics in Technical Writing

["Elisa R. Sawyer" <elisawyer -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Please never, never question whether I value ethics.

To suggest that I don't value ethics is the most insulting thing that you
can ever do to me.

-Elisa

On Mon, May 1, 2017 at 12:42 PM, Lauren <lauren -at- writeco -dot- net> wrote:

> Iâm not discussing the âphrase in question,â Iâm discussing the ethical
> principle that the discussion about the phrase raised. Perhaps you do not
> value ethics in technical writing. Your statement about the phrase being
> âan actual quote or just some random jargon,â underscores the need of
> technical writing ethics. The lack of discussion on the subject of ethics
> underscores a lack of interest in ethics among technical writers.
>
> It is artificial job security when documentation is wrong and the
> technical writer can blame the SME because the technical writer will be
> called on to fix bad documentation. That approach is not ethical. We do not
> know what the original phrase was but for all posterity, technical writers
> freely provided opinions on how to make a bad instruction grammatically
> correct, while the grammatical correction could change the instruction.
>
> Ethics, if any are followed, would be breached if grammatical rules were
> followed over the accuracy of instruction. It is a dangerous practice if
> ethics like this are never followed. So why is it that technical writers
> neither discuss nor care to follow ethics? Why are SMEs held accountable
> for bad instruction when a technical writer may be the last person to see a
> document before it is released and can determine if an instruction is vague?
>
>
>
> On 4/30/2017 10:49 AM, Robert Lauriston wrote:
>
>> You guys have certainly gone to remarkable lengths in discussing this
>> given that we don't know whether the phrase in question was an actual
>> quote or just some random jargon the original poster made up in the
>> style of his English-challenged SMEs.
>>
>
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-- 
Elisa Rood Sawyer
~~~~~^~~~~~
Technical and Creative Writer
"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today." Mark Twain
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