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I was once told three times in one week, by three different SMEs,
that while they provided the information, my job was to "make it pretty."
Other tech writers at that company had the same experience. I finally
explained to one SME (a product tester/analyst) that my job was the same as
his--he pounded on the software to find the problems, and I pounded on the
information to find its problems and then fixed the information to make sure
the user could understand it.
I can't really blame the SME. From his perspective I was just
someone who came to his office with a notebook, jotted down all his
information, then later brought it back to him attractively formatted in a
nice printed manual. He had no idea what went on in between or just how hard
it is to make information usable for someone else.
