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Perhaps the statement "most people calling themselves technical writers give
content lip service" is something of an exaggeration. Take a look at the
TECHWR-L thread entitled, "Now is the winter of our dis-CONTENT," which ran
last November. The list might harbor a few "proud ignoramuses," but most of
the respondents seem to care a *lot* about knowing their content and getting
it right.
Dan Goldstein
-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Byfield
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 2:11 PM
To: Andrew Plato
Cc: TECHWR-L;
Subject: Re: Author, author
Quoting Andrew Plato <>:
> The problem is that most people calling themselves technical writers, give
> content lip service. They say its important. They acknowledge its value.
But
> they don't really invest the time or energy to make their content better.
> This is largely because these technical topics stray outside their
> comfort zone.
> And
> rather than embrace the unknown and learn something new, they make up
> excuses
> and justifications for why they don't need to know the unknown. This leads
> to
> absurd rationalizations for why writers can be totally ignorant and
somehow
> be
> of value to a team.
<snip>
I've also met tech-writers who seem to take a perverse pride in not knowing
their subject matter, announcing their ignorance with the sort of defiance
at
getting away with something that mark the relations of some teenagers with
their parents. I remember one who boasted that all she did for API
documentation was copy and paste some comments from the source code, then
coax
a programmer into writing an example or two. Apparently, her manager was no
better, since she got away with it.
</snip>
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