RE: Story of my life

["Anita Lewis" <anital -at- threerivers-cams -dot- com>]

Syed commented:
"I defended myself and our profession to the best of my abilities, but
these >people/comments still pop up every now and again.  These are all
I can think of for now, but I'd love to hear yours."

I've heard all of that, and more.  Talking to a developer recently about
a report he created using one- and two- letter codes to represent
certain statuses:
Me:  What do these letters represent?  
Him:  Status X, Status Y, Status Z.
Me:  Well, how am I supposed to tell what those are?  I will put a key
in the documentation but I think there should also be one right on the
report. 
Him:  I agree.  No one reads the documentation anyway.
At least the key showed up on the next report!

IMHO, the view of tech writing largely depends on whether the person
commenting is Technical, Non-technical Management, or Everyone Else.

>From the Techies:  No one reads documentation anyway.
>From the Non-Technical Management (as an afterthought):  Gee, wouldn't
it be nice to have a user manual?
>From Everyone Else:  You're a tech writer?  Wow.  You must be really
smart!

Obviously, I prefer to hear Everyone Else's opinions :-)


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