how much "tech" to expect from technical editors?

Subject: how much "tech" to expect from technical editors?
From: nancy ott <ott -at- ANSOFT -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 10:46:50 EST

> Subject: Re: QUERY: How much "tech" to expect from tech editors?
> Author: Glenda Jeffrey <jeffrey -at- LEMOND -dot- HKS -dot- COM> at INTERNET_MAIL
> Date: 3/10/95 6:19 AM

<snip>

> Perhaps you are really saying that we should not bother to hire writers
> or editors that do not have engineering backgrounds -- but writers with
> this kind of background are fiendishly difficult to find, in our experience.
> They exist, but they are rare. (You know the old adage about engineers not
> being able to write worth beans...)

> I think our approach should be
> to have the engineers write the first cut, and then depend on the tech
> editor to make it more understandable. This demands a bit less
> of the tech editor, but s/he must still be able to determine whether
> what has been written makes sense. Do you think we need a tech writer
> with an engineering background for this?

How can you do a technical edit without understanding the software and
its associated theory? I find it difficult to believe that your
company's product is so horribly complicated that you can't use it at
all. Even if you cannot determine which type of elements to use in a
particular model (for instance), you could still get your engineers to
set up examples that teach you the basic concepts of the software. It
seems to me that you need at least this minimum knowledge to do your
job -- and I highly doubt that you'd need an engineering degree to
learn the software at that level.

By the way, I also work for a software firm that develops finite
element-based CAE products. And our products also require a decent
amount of engineering knowledge to use correctly. However, we've
taken the opposite approach -- hiring writers who have a good enough
technical background to understand the product -- and I think our
documentation is much better for it. True, it's more difficult to
locate this type of writer. But I find the alternative unacceptable.
Our software developers and researchers are great people and several
of them are decent writers ... but by and by large, they have no clue
about how to write end-user documentation. I shudder to think how
lousy our manuals would be if we depended on them to write the first
draft. (And as for getting them to write online help...!!!) We often
use written materials that they provide (internal release notes,
technical papers, handouts and slides from presentations, etc.) and we
depend heavily on them for technical information. But our *technical
writers* write the actual documentation.

I believe that limiting technical writers to rewriting or "prettying
up" an engineer's writing demeans our profession. Basically, it makes
us look like a bunch of glorified desktop publishers. I also think
that this is one of the reasons why tech writing is held in such low
regard (as Vince Putnam mentioned in another reply to this post).

On this list, we've often talked about educating management about the
role of the technical communicator. Maybe it's time we started
educating ourselves.

- nancy

--
nancy ott....ansoft corporation....pittsburgh, pa -dot- -dot- -dot- -dot- ott -at- ansoft -dot- com
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