RE: Important Stuff They Don't Teach In Tech Writing School Was Re: School vs experience...

Subject: RE: Important Stuff They Don't Teach In Tech Writing School Was Re: School vs experience...
From: Mailing List <mlist -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 11:36:56 -0400



Tony Markos sez:

> IMPORTANT STUFF THEY DON'T TEACH YOU IN TECH WRITER
> SCHOOL:
>
> * Good technical communications is so simple and
> straight forward, they will wonder what took you so
> long. (This is a major reason for the lack of good
> technical communications.)

I've been fortunate enough to have been employed in
companies where there were a lot of engineers with
English as a second (third... fourth) language, so
I generally haven't met that issue -- though I know
it's out there.

> * Management's Philosophy: "We don't want our
> technical communications to be too clear; we make most
> of our money off of training."

Well, I've encountered the related "we make most of
our money off support calls", but then the company
wants good documentation for the support people, so
it's just a different audience but the need is still
there.

> * There is no correlation at all between good
> grammar and good technical communications.

Gimme a URL, please, to some top-notch (i.e., effective
and usable) documentation that's riddled with slipshod
grammar and usage. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm
just saying. . . :-)

I've seen plenty of examples of nicely grammatical stuff
that wasn't very good technically or was difficult to
navigate. I haven't seen any grammar-optional documents
or help that nevertheless was a model of technical
accuracy and usability. I'd like to see some. It might
be interesting to see the separation in action. Educational,
I'd bet. FWIW, my experience has been that the grammar-
optional stuff or the stuff written/translated badly from
another language has generally been on the low end of the
usability spectrum, but I'm prepared to be enlightened.
Eager, in fact.

Thanks,

Kevin (standing by, in Ottawa)

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