Re: re Pros and Cons of including writer's name

[Karl Hakkarainen <kh -at- MA -dot- ULTRANET -dot- COM>]

Yes, but...

I get to soar with the turkeys and sink with the eagles in so many others
parts of my business. Very little of what we do in business these days are
the results of singular achievements. When I was a newspaper reporter, my
name was on the byline, even if my copy editor was the one who made my
keystrokes into digestible prose.

If I don't trust or respect the work of the other folks on my team, I think
I've got bigger problems than whether my name is on the book or not.

kh

-----Original Message-----
From: Technical Writers List; for all Technical Communication issues
[mailto:TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU]On Behalf Of Eric J. Ray
Sent: Friday, May 29, 1998 9:09 AM
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: FWD: Re: re Pros and Cons of including writer's name


Name withheld upon request. Please reply on list.

*************************************************

Hear, hear! We have some pretty poor writers at this company, and my work
gets tossed in with theirs in our User's Guide. If my name was on it, and
the person reading it didn't know which parts were mine....

I get enough pride out of my work without having my name attached to the
work. If I want my name on it, I'll write my own book (like our esteemed
listowner and spouse have).

On Thu, 28 May 1998, Lisa Higgins wrote:

> I've been waiting for someone else to bring this up, but maybe I'm
> really the only one.
>
> I wouldn't want my name associated with about 70 to 80% of the stuff
> I've written.
>
> I'm not complaining, really. It's my job to write and produce what my
> company or my client wants. And they almost always want some pretty
> stupid things. Maybe the design is cumbersome. Maybe the manual has a
> "Conventions Used in this Guide" section (Good grief!!!), maybe some
> illiterate CEO made me include something about software that makes
> "extensive use of the function use native to modern computing" or is
> "a cornucopia of functional richness," or maybe there's just a bunch
> of extra stuff in there that shouldn't be there.
>
> I'm not deeply ashamed of too many things I've done, but I'm still
> not interested in taking complete credit or blame for someone else's
> style guide, template, illustration, or document requirements.