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Subject:Re: Team Efforts From:Daniel Wise <dewise -at- IX -dot- NETCOM -dot- COM> Date:Sat, 17 Jan 1998 20:17:53 -0600
Colleagues,
The digest for 13-14 January was a rich field to mine.
John Posada stated that he believes 99 out of 100 writing tasks requires the
writer to be a part of an on-site team effort. Perhaps in the world of user
doc this might be true, but it is far from being as universally true as John
would have it.
In the areas of copyediting, indexing, academic editing, book writing--in
short, many things other than user doc writing--the producer need not spend
full time, or even a significant portion of time, on site. In fact, rarely
does an indexer even speak to an author unless working directly for that
author rather than for the publisher. Likewise, copy editors may never
speak to their author in person, passing questions and suggestions back to
the author in writing through the publisher's manuscript editor.
As for me, my entire career in tech comm was spent on staff where I spent
many, many hours face to face with my authors discussing manuscripts,
smoothing the wrinkles out of engineering procedures, explaining why
something should be said one way rather than another, saving the author from
publishing a terrible gaffe, etc.
