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Subject:Re: A sobering encounter (So now what?) From:Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 3 Dec 2002 08:26:11 -0800 (PST)
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Andrew Plato wrote:
[Engineers just don't obsess over writing in the same
manner that tech writers do. Engineers generally don't care
about fonts, styles, maturity models, and the litany of marginally
valuable one-off stuff that consumes some writers to madness. They
care about - gasp - content
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This wasn't the case in my first job. Not only did the engineers do all that the font fonlders do, they also sprinkled the docs with stuff like "You can do XXXX and YYYY" without any further explanation. Their "manual" was a 100 page booklet that "documented" the functionality for a video editing suite that included: a hefty chunk of hardware, a 3d graphics program, a title graphics program, a linear editor, a non-linear editor and a 2d graphics program. The docs were clearly geared towards showing off how cool they (the company) were. There wasn't anything useful in that original doc. That's why they hired tech writers in the first place. That company doesn't exist any more....
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"And in the morning, I'm makin waffles." ~ Donkey
Sean Hower - tech writer http://hokum.freehomepage.com
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