Re: Quote of the Day

[Writers Book Mall <steve -at- writersbookmall -dot- com>]

To offer a somewhat different take, consider whether
the offenders speak similarly about people in clearly
non-professional roles, whether that's the cleaning
people, the admins, or whomever.

If not, this may be a case of some well-known
phenomenon in psychology whose name I've forgotten
where we humans like to draw distinctions between two
items that are really quite similar. This has some
adaptive advantage that I've also forgotten. :)

In other words, in a very backhanded way, this may
actually be a compliment. These people are essentially
telling you, if the above theory is correct, that you
are almost exactly like them. They perceive some small
differences that, were they more secure themselves,
they might appreciate, but in the present case are
unfortunately choosing to mock instead.

Don't know if this makes you feel any better, but at
least I've convinced myself! :)

> > If I had to boil the following rant down to a
> simple question, it would be:  How long does it take
> for a business to treat technical writing as a
> respected profession?  More specifically, how long
> does it take them to stop referring to us as
> "scribes"?
> > Four of the people who refer to us as scribes are
> developers who all but have outright contempt for
> technical writers.  Their "scribe" comments used to
> get muttered under their breath.  After a recent
> all-hands meeting, in which a senior VP referred to
> us as scribes, these developers started walking
> around snapping, "Hey, tech writer, go scribe; jot
> that down".

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