RE: More title questions

["Lauren" <lauren -at- writeco -dot- net>]

> From: Janice Gelb

> My job is that of a technical editor and although
> I have written some of our internal tools documentation
> manuals, that is not my primary job function. I imagine
> the writers on here will object as much as I do to a
> job title that implies that their primary function is
> to edit! Editing and writing are different jobs with
> different responsibilities and although often people
> must do both in their working environment, that doesn't
> mean that the titles can or should be combined.
> 
> I don't think that writers who occasionally do peer
> editing to catch overlooked obvious errors because their
> company does not employ editors should append "editor"
> to their titles. You only need to invent a hyphenated
> or slashed title if your editing responsibilities are
> equal to or on the same professional standing as your
> writing responsibilities.

In my case, I don't consider a combination title of two jobs to be an
invented title.  However, my experience is in contracting and in working at
small companies where I had to perform multiple functions, so issues with
multiple titles are common for me.  

I generally use one title per job, but I use the combination title when I
need to emphasize two disciplines.  For one "writer/editor" job, I was
editing the documentation of several SMEs who had come into the project as
technical writers.  I also developed a lot of the content.  The end result
was a collection of multiple documents with a consistent style and voice, so
the documentation reflected both my writing and editing abilities.  In that
case, I feel that I was a "technical writer/editor" because one title would
not effectively describe the work that I performed.  Although, now that the
job is nearly ten years old, I usually choose one title that suits the
current résumé, but both titles are appropriate for the work that I
performed.

Lauren

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