Re: Military Doc.

[Cam Whetsone <camw -at- HOME -dot- COM>]

In my history as a technical writer (about 40 years), I have worked on
more military than commercial manuals.  When I read R. K. Ahuja's
comments I could not believe my ears.  In working for a company that is
producing military documentation, the specifications are the rule.
There is no ignoring them.  They are pretty specific, and if you want to
do something different it has to be written into the contract that you
can.  In the old days, the only manuals were military.  Commercial
manuals might comprise an engineering drawing and a couple of pages of
marketing fluf.  Today that has changed a lot.  Today manuals contain
more information (and if they're well written, more useful information)
than in the past.

In some ways writing military manuals is easier, in other ways harder.
I can remember documenting a microprocessor-controlled system to
MIL-M-16616-SHIPS and having to get an exception to the requirement that
schematics had to show typical voltages and waveforms for each pin on
the board connectors.  I had to explain to the Navy Reviewers that that
information would be meaningless for data busses and we had to
incorporate an exception to the specification into the contract.

I thnk military writing could be a good training ground for a technical
writer, since the specifications spell out so much of what is required.
Cam Whetstone


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