Re: What Are Writing Skills?
Jerry Muelver wrote:
I can make an engineer into a writer a lot easier than I can make a writer into an engineer. Communication is the eliciting of a response -- effective communication is the eliciting of a desired response. Engineers understand and respect the difference, and will gladly work to a spec that says, "Get thus-and-so behavior out of the reader," whereas a capital-W Writer will more often work for personal warm fuzzies and leave the consequences of readers' behavior up to the readers themselves.
I could not disagree more with this premise. Good writing--good communication--is not a skill that is either easily taught or easily learned.
But what offends me the most is the assumptions that "a capital-W Writer will most often work for warm fuzzies." The goal of good writing, of good technical writing, is to help readers reach their goals. Or on an even higher and more important level, to ensure reader (read: user) happiness. Good (technical) writers are proud of work that accomplishes this goal, but have no ego that stands in the way of others' contributions and input to help reach that goal.
Chuck Martin
I'm sorry you took offense -- I must have trod on your extended sensibilities somehow.
I think you could profitably re-examine your denial that capital-W writers work for warm fuzzies. To claim that "no ego stands in the way of others' contributions and input to help reach that goal" is to deny intrinsic motivation for writing, leaving us nothing but hacks building up word-count.
Communication is the eliciting of a response. Effective communication is the eliciting of a desired response. The writer is not responsible for reader happiness -- just for reader response. Achieving the desired response, the one the client (read: boss) wants, makes for client happiness. And that means the writer gets to continue writing for a living. How well the needs of the user are satisfied ultimately depends on the perception and competence of the client. Have you never been thwarted by client inadequacies in your goal of "ensuring user happiness"?
There is nothing magic in technical writing. It's a learnable skill, a bag of tricks that can be handed off to anyone who can get at least a "B" in college freshman English (or German, Japanese, Esperanto....). There is magic in playing jazz, writing poetry, and doing higher math, but not in technical writing. Take pride in doing a good job, demonstrating skill and a modicum of intellectual prowess, if you will, but not in doing any kind of magic.
---- jerry
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- Re: What Are Writing Skills?, Gene Kim-Eng
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Re: What Are Writing Skills?: From: Al Geist
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