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Subject:Re: Value of technical writers - Sort Of. From:Chris Willis <cfwillis -at- M1TECH -dot- COM> Date:Sun, 3 Jan 1999 10:58:14 -0500
Cam Whetstone wrote:
> You don't need to have the
> technical skills and knowledge, you are
> provided with all the technical
> content by someone else.
It always starts that way. It's what you do with it once you begin to get a
grip that separates the good technical writer from the scribe.
> Most just listen to the 'SME'
> and go from there. If the SME is
> not such an E, and the SM is flawed in
> translation
If a technical writer is taking the word of a SME and not doing any
reasearch or exploration on their own, then the writer may not be fully
doing the job assigned. In most cases, our writers are charged with -- and
do become -- surrogate SMEs for their project by the time they are done.
Many times their are multiple SMEs, and our writers are the ONLY people on
the project who end up with ALL of the information. In these cases, each
SME is so engrossed their own piece of the puzzle that they lose touch with
the big picture. We are valued for gathering, organizing, and presenting
that information in a usable package.
I would disagree with your assessment that "most" writers take what the SME
gives them and spit it back with gramatical edits. When was the last time
you sat down with a SME for a software product and they gave you an outline
broken into the appropriate sections -- starting, for instance, with a
Getting Started section!
Most SMEs attack software by its toolbar buttons, hardware by its knobs and
features -- not by user task. Many SMEs write in verbose, academic style --
not in a clean, minimalist, "cut the garbage and give me what I need to do
the job," style. Very few SMEs are well versed on Microsoft or other
corporate standards, and use them consistently. These are all traits of a
good technical writer (who, if lucky, is backed up by a good technical
editor).
By gathering all of the information together and organizing it, then by
asking key questions to fill in any blanks, we get to the heart of the
information and build a usable end user product. Unless you have one
dynamite SME, you are not likely to get information handed to you that way
on a silver platter. Some SMEs happen to be darned good writers, and some
writers happen to be SMEs. If that's the case, then a good edit job is all
that is needed.
Chris Willis, President
Media 1 Technicom, Inc.
616.837.6119 voice
616.837.1974 fax
