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Subject:Re: Value of technical writers From:Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 31 Dec 1998 16:06:47 -0800
Janet Valade wrote:
>
>
> >In my (rather
> considerable)
> >experience, people go into technical writing because they find they
> can do
> >something that pays well with a fundamental ability to write.
>
> It sounds like you are saying that technical writers are wannabee
> novellists and poets who can't make a living writing novels and poems. I
> hope this is not true. This is not much different than saying that technical
> writers are wannabee engineers.
Not at all, although a case could be made that a significant minority of
technical writers have a partly-written novel stashed away somewhere. I suspect
that a lot of technical writers chose this business because writing came easily
to them, or because they simply like communicating with the world through words,
rather than pictures. A case could also be made - and this is a hypothesis I've
been working on for some time now [tongue firmly planted in cheek] - that many
people choose engineering SO THAT they will never have to write another word the
rest of their lives.
