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Subject:Re: What does a tech writer do? (fwd) From:Win Day <winday -at- IDIRECT -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 9 Sep 1997 18:00:36 -0400
At 05:10 PM 9/9/97 -0400, Betsy Hanes Perry wrote:
>Larry Weber commented,
>------- start of forwarded message -------
>
>Mostly, we decipher and spruce up information generated by programmers
>and marketing people.
>
>----- end of forwarded message -----
>
>I think this varies widely by company. In my 15-year career, I have
>very rarely had written source material from either the engineers or
>the marketing people. Most of the time, the "information" I had was
>the source code and, if I was very lucky, the running product. I can
>think of a a few occasions on which I rewrote existing marketing or
>programming documents, but even then the bulk of the final document
>was original work. (Yes, I rewrote other writers' work when
>revising existing documents, but that's a different issue.)
>
>I'm curious: how do the rest of you work?
>
I, too, seldom receive written source material. I don't get code, since
most of what I write isn't software-related.
I get history logs from refinery control instrumentation systems, process
flow diagrams (or worse still, just the process simulation based on a
process flow diagram I then have to recreate), hand-sketched diagrams
(usually out-of-date) of control systems loops, and refinery piping and
instrumentation diagrams. Kinda like source code for chemical engineers.
When I write Windows help, as I'm now starting to do, I get partial builds
of the application in question rather than source code. And of course,
these change several times a day...
Win
----------------------
Win Day
Technical Writer/Editor mailto:winday -at- idirect -dot- com
=====================================
There's a lot more to gain from his living than wealth.
There's a lesson to learn with devotion:
Be kind to all others, as well as yourself,
Or you'll drift like a boat out on the ocean.
Roving Gypsy Boy (Jimmy Rankin)
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