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Subject:RE: Information Engineers From:Mary Arrotti <mary_arrotti -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com>, Gordon McLean <Gordon -dot- McLean -at- GrahamTechnology -dot- com>, 'Stuart Burnfield' <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Tue, 1 May 2007 07:34:03 -0700 (PDT)
It seems like this argument crops up periodically - the ability to write effectively vs. the ability to understand technical infomation.
I don't understand the perspective of this as an either or situation. I've worked with technical writers who couldn't write clearly and others who had difficulty understanding the technology or business they wrote about. In both instances - the documentation suffered. If you work in a competitive market - you don't have the luxury of not meeting either skill set - it's usually expected & required of you.
I have a specialized set of skills - I am not a junior programmer although I may share many of the same skills. When I lack technical or business understanding - I can figure out what questions to ask & how to ask them. So, I can get up to speed & learn things quickly. And every year I work, my technical skills increase as do my writing skills.
I can write clearly, quickly, effectively and I take pains to verify that my information is accurate & useful. As technical writers - this is the very minimum of what we should be doing.
I do not use the word "simply" or other garbage phrases. After many years of writing & working to improve my writing - this isn't something I have to think about & that's probably true of many other people on this list. Being an effective & highly skilled writer who continually works to improve these skills doesn't automatically confer a lack of technical understanding or skills.
Just to clarify - I'm not holding grammatically correct writing as the highest standard that we should meet. It's more important that the info we write is accurate and meets our users needs. And I'm not saying that there isn't value to having technical skills.
But there are skills that technical writers should excel at & writing is obviously one of them.
John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
Is it better to poorly or incorrectly describe a subject and never ue
the word "simply", or to produce content that teaches even the most
experienced CE's in the field and use 10% more words?
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