RE: Where to find and how to instruct tech writers

Subject: RE: Where to find and how to instruct tech writers
From: "Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- Users -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 10:58:38 -0400


As far as where to find people, you sound like you're doing the right thing. As far as telling people HOW to write, it sounds like what you're talking about is a style guide. Style guides are perfectly proper, and in fact considered a tool of the trade. What you need to do is analyze and codify your style, then write up the results as a set of guide lines. For example, is the passive voice acceptable (or even preferable)? Is it okay to say that a message "appears" on the screen, or does that sound to mystical? When referring to quantity, do you write out the numbers from one to ten and use digits for anything higher? Stuff like that.

-----Original Message-----
From: Johan Hiemstra [mailto:webmaster -at- techexams -dot- net]
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2003 5:19 PM
Subject: Where to find and how to instruct tech writers


Hello,

I have no idea what to expect from this list, but if I'm way off-topic here, which I don't think I am, please forgive me :)

My name is Johan Hiemstra, I consider myself a technical writer. My goal is to write a full book one day, about some networking related certification. Until I reach that goal I try to get by by publishing my own material on the web (see www.techexams.net). I've been doing that for about three years now, and had a couple of offers from companies, including O'reilly. I don't have any particular education in technical writing, except if Technical Writing for Dummies counts ;). I like to consider myself a specialist and a generalist at the same time being a specialist (or being able to become it quickly) in many subjects. I'm also my own SME in most cases. (I guess you heard that before.).

The thing is that I have written thousands of practice questions and hundreds of pages with study material (which I call TechNotes) in a certain 'style'. if it even can be called a style. I'm having so much fun with the site that I decided to invest some money in other tech writers to add more site content, but:

1. Where do you find such people? Yes, I found the obvious places to look for them (http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl, www.elance.com... www.google.com ) but I need tech writers that can write for certification exams in particular. with experience, certified, cheap ;). I guess I'm looking for SMEs who can write. is that uncommon? I figured with the current economy many people from the technical field with writing abilities would be desperately looking for work..

2. Do I really need to write some instructions to instruct people 'how' to write? To keep it in the same style. I want to spend as little time as possible, the idea of this is to save me time, not become an editor for someone else's work.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,


Johan

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