Re: Ethics in Technical Writing

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

I’m not discussing the “phrase in question,” I’m discussing the ethical 
principle that the discussion about the phrase raised. Perhaps you do 
not value ethics in technical writing. Your statement about the phrase 
being “an actual quote or just some random jargon,” underscores the need 
of technical writing ethics. The lack of discussion on the subject of 
ethics underscores a lack of interest in ethics among technical writers.

It is artificial job security when documentation is wrong and the 
technical writer can blame the SME because the technical writer will be 
called on to fix bad documentation. That approach is not ethical. We do 
not know what the original phrase was but for all posterity, technical 
writers freely provided opinions on how to make a bad instruction 
grammatically correct, while the grammatical correction could change the 
instruction.

Ethics, if any are followed, would be breached if grammatical rules were 
followed over the accuracy of instruction. It is a dangerous practice if 
ethics like this are never followed. So why is it that technical writers 
neither discuss nor care to follow ethics? Why are SMEs held accountable 
for bad instruction when a technical writer may be the last person to 
see a document before it is released and can determine if an instruction 
is vague?


On 4/30/2017 10:49 AM, Robert Lauriston wrote: