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Subject:Re: Are we just secretaries? From:Bill Swallow <bill_swallow -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 26 Oct 2000 12:14:29 -0700 (PDT)
> Geez. I feel like a secretary. I am not writing - I
> am
> making it pretty - formatting it - and also
> re-writing his writing. But executive secretaries -
> don't they do that too?
Some days will go well, others not. Programmers have
similar situations - sometimes they can be creative
and build something from scatch, and other times they
have to fix something that's either broken or
improperly coded. We all have our ups and downs.
On the bright side, you're helping make one document
usable, in addition to writing your own.
A while back I used to work as a typesetter. I did
pretty much everything you're doing now, except the
materials I worked on were in many languages in
addition to English. Though a re-write was out of the
question, as English is my only fluent language, I
spent 8+ hours a day formatting text, cleaning up
paragraphs and futzing with font size, leading and
kerning to make that darn German translation fit into
the mandatory two-page, 3-column layout.
Even though the woek was mindless at times and didn't
seem to be all that glamorous, I did walk away from
that job with some pretty slick skills, which I've
been able apply to many other projects.
=====
Bill Swallow
Technical Writer
PowerAdz.com
518.687.6107
bswallow -at- poweradz -dot- com
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