Re: What to do?

["Anameier, Christine A - Eagan, MN" <christine -dot- a -dot- anameier -at- usps -dot- gov>]

I wrote:
> This is a very good point. I always cringe when someone suggests
> teaching an in-house writing class for engineers/developers. Are they
> going to teach you engineering next?

Chuck Martin, with whom I *usually* agree, wrote...
> If you've not already been taught significantly and comprehensively
> in engineering disciplines, then how can you lay claim to the
> "technical" in "technical writer?"

Your question surprises me, Chuck -- I didn't think you were among the
crowd that believes technical writers need an engineering background. 

I write end-user software documentation. 

There hasn't been a single moment yet in my tech writing life where I
needed to have been taught "significantly and comprehensively in
engineering disciplines." I haven't needed to know programming languages
either. What I have needed has been a solid grasp of how to communicate
information to users, along with an ability to learn new material
quickly and often independently. I need to look at an interface and
figure out where the alligator pits are (it seems there's always at
least one), and steer the users around them if I can't talk somebody
into fixing the problem...

I mentioned engineers because that's what people were talking about in
this thread, but my SMEs have been mostly tech support or implementation
people, with a few developers here and there. 

How do I lay claim to "technical," you ask? I don't claim to be an
engineer or a programmer or a QA analyst or a help desk person. I'm a
writer who can extract data from people in those jobs and turn it into
something that helps the user. Typically that job is called "technical
writing," but call me a "documentation specialist" or "information
developer" if you'd rather. (If you object to calling technical writers
"technical" if they don't have engineering training, we better rename
the lower tiers of "technical support" too...)

> We're the writers; they're not.
> 
>> Actually, we all are. We write in different languages.

By "writers" I mean the people who write documentation for the users,
not code for the application. Lest my comment be misinterpreted--I'm not
saying "we're the exalted writers, they're the dummies who can't write."
I'm saying "we know how to write documentation; they know how to write
programs [or whatever it is they do]; let's all play to our strengths." 

Christine

....postscript: I just read further in the digest and found this
statement from Chuck:
> But if engineering is applied science, then what we do is definitely
> engineering, because we apply the sciences of information gathering
and
> organization, communication, translation, and much more in what we do.

Well, in that case, what are we arguing about? By that definition, I'm
an engineer... 



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