Re: What Are Writing Skills?

Subject: Re: What Are Writing Skills?
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 12:00:01 -0800


Tony Markos wrote:

Just out of curiosity, what is meant by "writing
skills"? I mean, grammar aside, if the TW knows the
product and the users, he/she is going to be able to
write user friendly documentation about it. If not,
nothing is going to save him/her. Isn't the real need
analysis skills - not writing skills?


It's not an either-or question. The term "technical writing" suggests a mixture of skills, and one is not much good without the other. You happen to be touting the technical side, but I'd argue against touting the writing side just as strongly, were someone to take that position.

However, I'd add that writing skills should be defined as more than putting a clearly worded sentence together. As you imply, reaching a basic competence in that area is fairly easy - although real expertise at the sentence level is that's harder that some people think. However writing skills should also cover a sense of how to structure lengthy material: how to assemble pieces for clarity, to position for emphasis (or de-emphasis), to create a sense of progression, and similar purposes. Even in English Departments, structure is poorly understood, and rarely taught. These are the areas where skill and art come into play. Grammar and clarity are just the tools to help create the structure; they are necessary, but not sufficient to make a writer.

Once you realize that a knowledge of structure is essential to writing skills, then the either-or distinction is removed. At best, you can only structure very roughly without knowing the material. Similarly, knowing the material, but being unable to structure it also results in inferior work - the sort you get when experts with no writing skills do a manual.
In other words, really, there isn't a dichotomy between the technical and writing aspects of the profession at all.

--
Bruce Byfield 604-421-7177
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield

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What Are Writing Skills?: From: Tony Markos

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