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Subject:Re: QA/QC and editing (and nightmares) From:AlumsHubby -at- AOL -dot- COM Date:Sat, 17 May 1997 11:19:24 -0400
In a message dated 5/16/97 12:43:32 PM, lffunkhouser -at- halnet -dot- com (LaVonna
Funkhouser) wrote:
>another question: Are QA/QC duties handled by an
>editor or by a person from the "quality department"?
Does the following nightmare sound familiar to anyone?
At one place I worked, the "hyphen wars" began because QA people who had no
editorial training or experience had editorial control over documents and, by
extension, the technical writers who produced them. We writers were
essentially reduced to typists who were expected to parrot whatever the QA
people told us to "write." This made sense regarding technical accuracy,
but QA'ers began capriciously dictating wording and punctuation style in
their markups, and management's oversimplified mandate to us writers
consisted of "Do what QA tells you to do. We don't have time to get into
p***ing contests between writers and QA people." When we asked the QA'ers
for consistency in their "guidance," management told us to stop being
arrogant and endangering the deliverable dates with our picky questions. The
paychecks were nice, but the product and the customers suffered as a result.
Hope I haven't kicked over a hornet's nest with this contribution...but if I
have, so be it...
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