Re: Challenges facing tech writers

[Kim Nylander <nylanderk -at- IPIX -dot- COM>]

On 1/6/99 12:10 PM, Kris Olberg muttered:

>Good technical writers perform an important function. That said, good
>technical writers are the exception, not the rule. I my nearly two decades
>of writing, managing projects, programming, testing, and training for IS and
>development shops, it has been my experience that the technical writers who
>produce good stuff are scarce.



>Why? IMNSHO, the entire technical writing community needs to re-engineer
>their product and how they educate, market, and sell it. The list of
>challenges facing the community is long and varied. Some of the big ones
>are:
>
>* Redirecting focus from tools to content. For entirely too long the
>community has lacked focus on the essence of where the community adds value:
>supplying content. Instead, we've made--or allowed others to make--tools and
>techniques our focus. All you need to do to verify this is to read any
>assortment of ads for technical writers. Review the skills requested--how
>many ads specify desired or required tools?
>
>* Redirecting focus from packaging to content. Attractive, easy to use
>formatting is important, but if the content is bad ...
>
>* Directing focus back on the needs of the users. Cases in point of how we
>fail to serve our users' needs: (1) 400-page user's guides, (2) the heading
>"Overview," (3) indexes produced late at night at the end of the delivery
>cycle that are missing entries, synonyms, and cross references, (4) "Getting
>Started" sections in reference material, (5) 8-1/2"x11" paper docs for
>workers with nonoffice work areas (healthcare workers, pilots, machinists,
>bank tellers, etc.), (6) WinHelp for non-Windows-based products, (7)
>consistency for the sake of consistency (on a tangent: as a programmer
>implementing a specification for a pipe-based transaction, I was using
>documentation that numbered the fields in the txn as 1,2,3,etc. Many
>implementations of arrays and vectors use indexes starting at 0 instead of
>1. My job would have been simpler had the documentation supplied an
>alternative numbering scheme that started at 0 instead of 1 so I wouldn't
>have to transpose by 1 each time I looked up a particular field. When I
>suggested the new scheme be added, I was answered with "Nonstandard. Stupid.
>You want what??!?")
>
>* Making it our responsibility to change our image. There is no doubt in my
>mind that corporate America does not perceive what we do as entirely
>positive. First, we need to stop puffing up into defensive positions and
>take a long, hard look at why this is so. Second, we need to take
>responsibility. Pointing fingers might feel good but accomplishes nothing.
>Nobody is going to fix this for us. Finally, we need to take action, both
>personally and as a community.



Technical Writer
Interactive Pictures
Oak Ridge, TN  37830
(423) 482-3000


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