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Each of these disciplines has a different set of requirements and skills that are necessary. Desktop publishing requires strong layout, design, and tool skills. Editing requires strong English skills. And authoring requires subject-matter expertise.
Skill in one discipline does not mean skill in the others. People who are great desktop publishers (a.k.a. tool monkey) are rarely also good writers. People who are writers often are terrible editors.
[snip]
The problem here is that STC and most of the tech writing programs out there, don't make this distinction of disciplines. As such, they produce tech comm people who have good editing and desktop publishing skills, but no authoring skills. As such, the tech comm profession has tons of desktop publishers and editors all calling themselves writers, when they really aren't qualified to write about anything other than grammar or tools.
A person who is a writer *MUST* have a deep and profound understanding of the subject matter. You cannot rightfully call yourself an "author" of anything if you don't understand what it is you're authoring. Authors do not get on the New York bestsellers list because they use XML and are team oriented. They get on the list because they have supreme control over the material they author.
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Okay, essentially, I wouldn't argue. In fact, I would ad that thorough knowledge of the subject matter is important in all types of writing. For example, if you're writing a story that takes place in the 60s and involves the use of a Polaroid camera, you'd better know all about those cameras that required you to pull the picture out yourself, time it, and peel the print off of the negative.
However, Andrew's argument seems to imply that the need for a superior command of the English language lies solely with the editor, which I don't agree with. One reason there's a need for technical WRITERS is that SME's often don't write well. Ever though it's the editor who polishes the writing, the writing has to be reasonably well-done to start with. Otherwise, the editor could just work with raw text from the SME.
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