Re: STC Certification Survey

["Parks, Beverly" <ParksB -at- EMH1 -dot- HQISEC -dot- ARMY -dot- MIL>]

>From:  Penny Staples[SMTP:pstaples -at- AIRWIRE -dot- COM]
>>>
>However, as things stand now, anyone who can type can
>call him or herself a Technical Writer. Regardless of whether
>or not that person can write a grammatically correct sentence,
>tell active from passive voice, or organize and write a document.
>When a person like this manages to get hired (perhaps by
>a company that has never employed a Tech Writer before),
>it makes us ALL look bad.
<snip>
>>>I think there's a bit of fear associated with setting up
>"certification" tests. What if I took the test and failed?
>Would I have to stop being a Tech Writer? Or take a cut
>in pay? On the other hand, they could also be a good
>thing -- personally, if I have weaknesses in any basic
>skills, I damned well want to know about it, so that I can
>do something about it.
<<

--------------
(I'm not picking on you, Penny. Your post just happened to contain a
good sampling of comments that most of us have about this topic.)

Does anybody else see the similarities between this topic (certifying
tech writers) and the to-do last week about people using the title
"engineer"? It seems like it's okay to want to protect your own
profession, but it's silly for another group to get all bent out of
shape about their title.

(I did say similar, not identical. Technical writer is a more specific
title than engineer.)


>Bev Parks
>parksb -at- emh1 -dot- hqisec -dot- army -dot- mil
>The Friendly Faces of TECHWR-L -
>http://www.bayside.net/users/cbsites/techwr-l/
>

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