In praise of editors...?

Subject: In praise of editors...?
From: Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, Bonnie Granat <bgranat -at- granatedit -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:59:16 -0400

Bonnie Granat notes: <<Indeed, and some of us (me, mainly, I guess)
are more editors than technical writers, though I could probably make
a fortune if Microsoft ever decides to create topics that "help"
people for Microsoft Word, Excel, and so forth.>>

Me too, though in defence of the writers and editors at Microsoft,
they may not have much say over what they get to create*. (I don't
get any impression that software development at Microsoft is any more
rational than software development elsewhere.) What they do write is
reasonably well written -- though it fails to answer my questions as
often as it answers them, or provides answers that don't actually
match the behavior of the software. I'm sure the same could be said
of any of the documentation _we_ create.

* Except for their manual of style, which strikes me as nuts far more
often than it makes me go "yeah, good call".

I recall hearing (from a reliable source, too long ago to attribute)
that the original design specification for online help for some
Microsoft product (possibly Word?) was that it had to fit on a single
1.4-Meg floppy disk. If true, that kind of ignorant attitude can
poison the environment for writers and editors for many years to
come. It takes an awful lot of advocacy and the kind of political
power most of us lack to change things when they're that badly
disfunctional.


----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
--------------------------------------------------
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(http://www.geoff-hart.com/home/onscreen-book.htm)


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Follow-Ups:

References:
In praise of editors...: From: Chris Borokowski
RE: In praise of editors...: From: Bonnie Granat

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