Re: Hi-Tech Company Hasn't Used Tech Writers in Years

Subject: Re: Hi-Tech Company Hasn't Used Tech Writers in Years
From: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 09:31:54 -0800


This used to be a typical practice (it may still be, but I've been out of the
industry for a long time now). Military personnel in the field take the
500 page manuals that design engineers and technical writers produce,
tear out the 50 or so pages that contain the information they *really*
need, then redline it to reflect the way things are *really* done. I had a
chuckle when I read that post about the "former lifer" who needed to stop
"living in the past" and get used to the "real world," because that manager
would no doubt retort that it's the civilian weenies and the DoD procurement
desk jockeys who are living a fantasy and have no idea how the "real world"
works. In one of my defense jobs, the program director (one of those "former
lifers") decided that the field instructions would be written not by the design
engineers or tech writers, but by the test engineers, because we at least were
out there crawling around inside the structures and actually putting things
together, sometimes pulling all-nighters in the dead of winter to get ready for
a morning test, and would have some idea what it was really like to have to
work off the instructions under actual conditions. He used to joke that what
he really wanted to do was set off lots of alarm klaxons and an occaisional
grenade in the distance so we really get the "feel" of it.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message -----
From: "Lippincott, Rick" <Rick -dot- Lippincott -at- flir -dot- com>

Sarge thought long and hard, scratched his chin, and a look of
frustration came over his face as he clearly couldn't explain what was
wrong. "Ahhhh, don't worry about it. The maintenance crew is just going
to enlarge a page out of the Illustrated Parts Breakdown manual, and use
that to assemble the thing."

Sigh.....


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RE: Hi-Tech Company Hasn't Used Tech Writers in Years: From: Lippincott, Rick

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