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Subject:Re: Comment on terminology From:Vicki Rosenzweig <murphy!acmcr!vr -at- UUNET -dot- UU -dot- NET> Date:Wed, 18 Aug 1993 14:26:36 EDT
It sounds as though Pam was making a distinction between people who
are actually working as technical writers and people who are doing
secretarial work, either because that's what they were hired as
(which is fine as far as it goes; there are lots of good reasons not
to use a highly paid engineer's time on typing routine correspondence)
or because they feel too intimidated to say "Wait a minute, I'm a
technical writer, and that sentence needs work," or to point out that
it doesn't make sense to use a trained technical writer as a typist
either. Or, poor souls, because they have pointed that out and the
response was "OK, fine, if you feel that way, we'll get someone who
_is_ willing to do the typing." In any case, the problem isn't with
her terminology, but with the company that has hired technical writers
and then wasted their skills, or has refused to either hire technical
writers or give the SMEs the training and time they need to write
documentation.
This screed is, needless to say, my opinion only.
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr%acmcr -dot- uucp -at- murphy -dot- com
