Re: Culture, or What it means to be a Technical Writer

[Damien Braniff <Damien_Braniff -at- PAC -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

Who cares what metaphor we use as long as WE know what mean.  I can
describe what I do as "translation", after all, most of the information is
available somewhere (on paper, in people's heads etc) so it is "translated"
with varying degrees of work required.  At a push you could even include
the doc design etc in the translation process and the "look" is part of
what makes it easy to read and understand.

Having said that, I'm equally happy to be called a doc design and
management consultant or any other variation that fits at the time.  I know
what I do and I explain it in a variety of ways to people who ask - doesn't
change what I do, after all a title is just that.  We recently renamed a
large user manual to a User Reference Manual and did a Quick User Guide.
It didn't change the contents of the large manual but made it more
acceptable to some users - it's got "reference" in the title so it's
allowed to be large!

Damien Braniff
Technical Author
PAC International

PS  I recently came across  a quote I'd like to use in an article but don't
know where it came from can anyone help?

"You steal somebody's work and it's called plagiarism, you steal lots of
peoples' work and it's called research"

TIA
Damien