Re: Where did you get your feet wet?

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

When I started work as an engineer in the 70's, almost all the people I
ever saw doing technical writing work were either new grad engineers
who (theoretically) being fresh out of school had not had a chance to
lose whatever writing skills they had developed from all the papers
they'd had to submit, older engineers, pilots, technicians, etc., who
were "winding down" their careers toward retirement or English major
graduates who were employed as editors to clean up the grammar,
spelling and organization of engineer-generated documents.  It was
very rare to come across a "technical writer" who was not a "former
something" in the technical areas we engineers were working in, and
while there would occaisionally be incidents where the engineer would
decide the writer's suggstions would change the meaning of the
document too much, I never saw a writer's input being denigrated,
because often the writers actually had more years in the technical
fields than some of the engineers.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barbara Green" <Barbara -dot- Green -at- neonesoft -dot- com>

I was about 5 years into my tech writing career before I met anyone who actually set out 
to be a tech writer. My ignorance, I'm sure, but it did surprise me at the time.



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