TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: time per page From:Robert Plamondon <robert -at- PLAMONDON -dot- COM> Date:Sun, 11 Jun 1995 09:26:20 PDT
Timothy Schablin writes:
>Just out of curiousity, how many pages of a tech manual can you produce
>in one day (8 hours). I'm doing about 3. Is that average?
For what? When I "produce" (that is, format) a manual with no diagrams,
I can often reach 50 pages per day. I can generally edit 25 pages per
day. I can write from zero to ten pages per day. These are formatted,
8.5x11" pages in 1-3 columns and 10-11 point type. Technical illustrations
can take me from ten minutes to a week to create.
Writing, in particular, depends on the nastiness of the subject matter.
I can whip out simple narrative copy at extreme speed, but register
bit-field definitions, based on an incoherent, incomplete, error-riddled
spec, is more an exercise in reverse-engineering than writing or editing.
I've heard people claim that Silicon Valley hardware technical writing
has a target of one page of writing per day, or 25 pages of editing.
Given the horrendously bad source materials, the writing rate varies
little if the document is a reworked engineering specification or rewritten
completely from scratch.
Marketing and promotional material is generally slower to write, since
style and nuance count for a lot, and the space is generally very limited.
