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There is no telling the background on this piece. The company could
have subscribed to the old school and had it prepared by an engineer
or a secretary or someone else with no training or desire to write. Who
knows? It is obvious, though, that they either have no clue their writing
is worthless or they don't care.
IMHO, whenever I see poor technical writing it is my duty to my profession
to notify the company from which it came. If they have a writer on staff, they
should know their writing needs improvement (whether or not they are willing
to
change it). If the company does not value writing, it needs to rethink its
attitude.
Too many times we have discussed how little we are valued. The only way
a company will know better is by feedback. I explain this to my friends and
colleagues when they complain about a poorly written manual and encourage
them to let the company know.
In this, I practise what I preach. I encourage feedback from customers on my
manuals in any way I can: through technical support, talking at user's
meetings,
and I hope to do a survey in the future. This lets me know how I can better
meet
the users needs. However, I could not do this if my company did not support
it.
By the way, my company learned the hard way that a good writer is important.
The last tech writer here did not meet the users needs. The users would not
even
look at the manual; they would call technical support instead.
Melonie Holliman
ABM Data Systems, Inc.
Austin, TX
mailto: LonieH -at- aol -dot- com
In a message dated 7/2/98 6:39:14 PM Central Daylight Time,
ampersandvirgule -at- WORLDNET -dot- ATT -dot- NET writes:
<< I would not presume to suggest that any sort of credential automatically
qualifies a person as a tech writer. For all I know the writer of this
tripe has a Master's degree and is an officer of an STC chapter. (Then
again, maybe the tech writer was out sick that day and the page was put
up by a developer.) But something has to change if we're going to
engender a warmer reception when we first walk up to a developer and
say, "Hi, I'm a tech writer, and I'm here to help."</indignation>
>>
