Professional respect

["Meena S" <meena -at- thinkbn -dot- com>]

Hi everyone,

I dunno if I sound whiny here, but I have seen some of my engineer
colleagues not "exactly" understand the responsibilities of a Technical
Writer- they tend to look down on a TW as someone who just "CCPs" (that's
cut, copy, paste) and align and format documents.  Their take is that a
Technical Writer, per se, does not add any value whatsoever to the software
production process.

How do I get the message across that a TEchnical Writer is an important part
of the communication cycle which itself is an important part of the
organisation itself? I have tried to participate more, give sessions on
documentation and its importance, even volunteered to wade thru boring
documents to show them a client or potential customer just HATES to see a
typo or a badly written document.  It can make anyone cringe..

I find that mostly I have be defending my job and its responsibilities. Is
this an attitude problem or what?? Have any of you faced such situations?

I was in advertising and web content development prior to this and the
respect and freedom that is accorded to a copywriter is just not there for a
TW.

-Meena S Maniam
TECHNICAL WRITER
Think Business Networks
India


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