Re: Academic Pomposity

["Wayne J. Douglass" <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM>]

At 02:02 PM 3/4/97 -0600, Paul J. Sisler wrote:
>Academic writing in technical communication is a genre, and it is rife with
>jargon specific to a narrow discipline.  But when it does its job:  it is
>intelligible to its audience (for the most part).  It is *not* technical
>communication itself--it is academic communication about technical
>communication.

When I first departed academic life for the tech writing game, I fantasized
about reading a paper at the Modern Language Association section on
Technical Writing that started, "Technical writing is a subliterary genre."

My attitude at the time was colored by my experience as a technical editor.
In those days, I toyed with the idea of adding a note to our copyright page
that read, "The prose style of this manual has been technically augmented to
simulate English."

--Wayne Douglass

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