14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing
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1. AN i f Adobe Technical Communication Suite 4 P next gen technical content INTRODUCING THE LEADING TECHNICAL AUTHORING SOLUTION FOR PRINT ne ONLINE DESKTOP AND MOBILE CONTENT VERSION i This entry was posted in Blog and tagged false concepts myths Technical Writing on June 26 2008 http idratherbe writing com 2008 06 26 myths myths myths about technical writing By Tom Johnson A little more info about me I m a technical writer working for a gamification company in the San Francisco Bay Area I m primarily interested in content findability and visual communication all essential topics in technical communication blog pretty regularly here about 3 times a week Subscribe to my blog if you want to stay updated with new posts Feel free to contact me if you have questions View all posts by Tom Johnson 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 5 of 17 38 thoughts on 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing Pingback Shanghai Tech Writer 2 Pr Gordon June 26 2008 at 3 03 am I m struggling to think of anything to add to this Tom excellent post and right in every way can think I m sure some will knock some of your suggestions but it s about time some technical writers woke up and realised what was going on If you aren t onboard with these kind of things then2. Pingback TWR Technical Writing Skills Technical Writing is an art J Paul Crone October 6 2008 at 4 24 am 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 15 of 17 Hi Tom Struck by your article never considered Technical Writing as a career option Tsk tsk earned two degrees all about communicating While in ministry handily relied on my English BA and Master of Divinity direct applications Yet series of unexpected turns landed me in business specifically sales I ve sold everything from square feet to software never thinking would ever see a career application for my de grees My degrees helped me with analysis and presentation but I ve always put them at the end of my resume fol lowing a string of sales successes Now after reading your advice I m thinking Converge selling which do well with the writing analysis and pre sentation skills directly into a technical writing career for more than 40 000 a year right Now after reading there is hope in business yet Maybe don t have to have another degree That WOULD BE great news if true Thanks Pingback Technical Writing Breaking In Naked Job Pingback Transitioning from Literary Studies to Technical Communication I d Rather Be Writing Tom Johnson Pingback Link colle
3. one who might only have 6 7 years of experience but who happens to be extremely athletic with sharp court sense and better depth of field See what mean Labron James who plays for the Cavaliers is 24 He probably only has 19 years of experience playing basketball Does it make any sense for me to trumpet my 27 years of experience in contrast to his 19 Bibhu June 29 2008 at 9 35 am This article and the comments made me think deeply about the way my company describes the TW profile And am sure most companies look for the same qualities qualifications in TWs experience as a TW expertise in spe cific doc tools domain tech knowledge besides some generic skills Does your post Tom mean most companies are wrong think your points are true to a great extent but not entirely Experience should never mean the number of years spent doing a particular job but it does in this practical world This is true for all types of jobs and not particularly technical writing Other measures of experience are more difficult and expensive to measure It s unfortunate that many deserving but inexperienced candidates are overlooked in this process agree that the ability to use some specific doc tool is not an important skill But companies spend a lot of money purchasing doc tools and training their staff to use them Isn t it natural that they want to recruit TWs who have ex perience in using the same tools My experience is that the
4. ability to learn tools quickly and easily is a rare skill and expect this in only one out of ten TWs You are very intelligent Tom but have to work with less gifted writers in my team who can t learn a new doc tool effectively in four months As for technical knowledge about the domain product it is crucial for TWs You can t write about what you don t know That doesn t mean you need as much technical knowledge as one would need to develop the product It only means you need as much technical knowledge as one would need to use the product to meet certain objectives 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 11 of 17 With products getting more and more complex sometimes this means substantial technical knowledge Now is it wrong to expect TWs to be tech savvy There is no Yes or No the answer is it depends and you know on what Having said all this am happy that you raised this topic TWs are fighting with a lot of myths around the world and the biggest and oldest of them is still alive technical writing is a necessary evil Esther Shira Stepansky June 29 2008 at 6 59 pm Jefferson Your comments about being able to conceive of people who don t know what you and consider basic tasks are right on target have been teaching my 78 year old mother how to use her brand new vista machine her f
5. market must respond to complex products 2 Let s say you re fresh out of college not too technical and want to go into TWing You work 10 years leaning on your ability to relate to the non technical user But after a while don t you catch on to how software works don t you automatically turn on that pop up blocker Would or should there be a way for the TW to remain as a Luddite this is rhetorical question propose these ideas There is TW work for people of all technical skill levels We should be telling prospective TWs that they need to find the projects that suit them More importantly one of the key skills for TWs is the ability to always see a procedure as a list of its component steps If we stress this skill then we don t have to worry about a TW becoming too experienced to document for the lowest common denominator take offense to suggesting that TWs need not be technical think the profession as a whole should suggest that TWing encompasses a large range work Despite the name empathizing with the audience is in the top 5 skills a TW must have This is the most broad way to frame it and doesn t exclude any side of the profession wOs last blog post Firefox 3 adoption rate and the culture of the Internet BEE tom Fat June 27 2008 at 8 20 am wO All right all right may have overstated 10 a little do think a good tech writer does have to be somewhat tech savvy You have to
6. new territory just doing what I m told or what I ve read for my entire life The pace of learning can be compressed into a very short time period or it can drawn out over a life time The time years of experience does not matter as much as the learning that takes place See this related post MySQL CEO Says It is dangerous to hire someone with too much experience 4 The tools you know are more important than your industry knowledge Many job ads say you have to know RoboHelp Photoshop CSS HTML Javascript C Sharp InDesign Dreamweaver DITA XML XHTML and so on But really if you have strong domain knowledge about an industry that knowledge can be a lot more powerful than a specific tool For example if you work in the financial industry a Series 7 license which al lows you to communicate with investors is a lot more important than RoboHelp It can take months of study to get your Series 7 and only a few weeks to pick up a tool See this related post Doug Davis on the Job Side of Technical Writing Location Industry Experience and Salary 5 Be careful about having a blog because all employers google you and will find it When hear this cringe The discussion always comes up among non bloggers who think blogs are a wart you need to hide Sure if you have an embarrassing MySpace page where you mix profanity with vulgarity and other shady content that s a site you need to obliterate But a professio
7. relative term once worked with a network engineer who thought was anything but a technical person because didn t understand the 7 layers of networking and how storage arrays and IP networks worked And you said you were technical he d scoff every once ina while And then when he needed a graphic in Photoshop or needed to use Word it was like he was ice skating for the first time falling down all over the place That s not my area of expertise he would say Esther Shira Stepansky July 1 2008 at 3 20 am wO says There is TW work for people of all technical skill levels We should be telling prospective TWs that they need to find the projects that suit them Plu leeze when is the last time any of you ever saw the following in a TW job ad Wanted entry level TW only Word skills will train NOBODY but nobody advertises for anything less than 2 years experience I d love to know how newbies these days are supposed to get it If they are new amp clueless they don t even know about open source projects let alone have the ability to actually do such projects with out supervision 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 14 of 17 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Where I am everything is we need it yesterday amp there s no time or budget to train so we only take
8. to ask meaning of eh He never understood a word of what said during the interview and luckily he hired me D And god their ex documentations were a series of disasters still read them and post on jokes site whenever feel low 1 ES Tom Johnson i July 14 2012 at 9 48 am 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt Shashank thanks for sharing your experience I m glad you found these myths useful in an interview You really seem to have fun playing with language here 37 Pingback Transitioning from Literary Studies to Technical Communication I d Rather Be Writing Comments are closed 17 of 17 10 19 13 11 07 AM
9. you will be left behind if you aren t already Gordons last blog post Your publishing model is broken Ps John Hewitt h June 26 2008 at 7 57 am Excellent article have to disagree about tools though While in an ideal world industry knowledge counts for more Most of the calls get from recruiters are due to my knowledge of specific tools Thanks to my current job at a credit card processing software firm now have reasonably good knowledge of the credit world especially on the back end but my bet is the next job get will focus on something completely differ ent You can be sure lIl be using some of the same tools though John Hewitts last blog post Six Suggestions for Sustainable Writing Inspiration from Frank Herberts Dune Pingback Your page is now on StumbleUpon Jefferson McClure June 26 2008 at 8 01 am Tom While I m not sure it s really necessary to cite the author of a cite it was actually me and not Anne Gentle that posted the link on WriterRiver which absolutely LOVE btw don t currently have a professional blog to share but WriterRiver is definitely inspiring me to start one 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 6 of 17 Thanks 6 Pingback 06 26 2008 Writing Jobs and Links PoeWar com Writer s Resource Center BE tom Ram a June 26 2008 at 9 16 am Jeffers
10. 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 1 of 17 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing Jefferson McClure added a thought provoking article link on WriterRiver com titled Myths of Technical Writing The arti cle is by Bob Doyle and appears on the dita xml org wiki site here In the article Doyle and other wiki contributors men tion 4 myths about technical writing The GlueText Myth The Stem Sentences Myth oe NS The Front Matter Page Numbering Myth 4 The Callouts on Graphics Myth You ll have to read the original for the details The debunking of these myths is supposed to help you embrace a struc tured authoring methodology like DITA The myths are genuinely insightful and it got me thinking about myths in a larger sense In part I m reflecting on myths because was recently invited to speak to students at a professional writing conference at BYU Idaho in the fall with the topic Three Myths About Technical Writers Apparently many students pursing English degrees assume technical writers have sold out They think technical writing is a fallback career It s something you can do if you re starving and don t have any other options Oh the financial naivete and idealism I m not sure what will convince people immersed in Charles Dickens and Edgar Allen Poe and Chaucer and Emily Dick inson who are writing
11. about deconstructionism and feminism and the intersection of Shakespearian influences on post modern authors etc that technical writing is more than just press this button here to program your VCR It will be a challenge but one worth taking When I was a student at BYU I held these same biases against technical writing acquired the myths from one presentation by a teacher who represented the English faculty on technical writing In a nutshell compared to the other English professors she was the most boring of any I ve ever met by a long shot She talked about formatting phone books whispered a silent vow to myself that would never never become like her While she spoke of layout and design for banal texts other professors ignited us with iterary ideas now have a personal vow to make technical writing look like one of the most appealing careers one could possibly pur SUE In addition to myths about technical writing as a sellout and fallback career can think of at least 10 other commonly held myths surrounding the field of technical communication offer them below 1 Technical writers spend most of their time writing Totally untrue Most tech writers spend about 10 of their time writing The rest of their time they spend learning applica tions noting bugs providing usability feedback structuring their content setting up styles for their help files trou 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myth
12. acity Acrobat Visio SharePoint Designer and probably a dozen others If you re am employer looking at my resume you should be less concerned with the specific tools that know and more interested in the fact that can learn a variety of tools You might look more specifically at the domain knowl edge have for your company Do know anything about investing Do know anything about the structure and methodology of your business Product Managers get paid a lot more than technical writers and yet they seem to lack the tool Knowledge of devel opers Instead their knowledge is in the industry in understanding users and their business process needs They are problem solvers not tool experts If were a hiring manager would be less concerned with the specific tools the applicant knows and more con cerned with other types of knowledge knowledge of the business of users of interacting in a software develop ment environment and so on Knowing the tools is a given If a tech writer can t figure out Flare after a couple of months can send him or her to a Flare bootcamp of some kind and quickly get him or her up to speed If employers are just looking for someone who knows a tool think they re focused short term trying to complete a finite documentation project Employers who look past tools are looking long term Ideally an employer should say use whatever tool you need to get the job done really like the m
13. ction for technical writing Y Ceffyl Dwr Pingback Suggestions for New Technical Writers Doc Box Consulting Pingback How Much Time Do Spend Writing Each Day Shanghai Tech Writer Patsy Harris May 14 2010 at 1 10 pm The big banks and Wall Street took billions in bailout money from taxpayers and then turned it into huge profit In an insider s club report a veteran trader exposed the banks and showed how the big banks made a huge power grab that allowed them to grow unchecked GC report Now I could understand why we never have the freedom to do what we want to do It is sure the big banks dont want us to see this Richard Grace October 25 2010 at 3 47 pm 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 36 16 of 17 think many of your points are valid and interesting couldn t disagree more however with the general assertion that tech writers don t need to be especially technical By far the best paying writer jobs are for those with significant technical background in IT security networking protocols and or software development Most especially APIs Also bear in mind that many lower level jobs have been outsourced offshored to India This practice has hollowed out many of the job categories that TWs once used as springboards to move ahead in their career The ONLY way I ve been able to continue getting callbacks fr
14. ers may not even know what screen resolution is much less how to adjust it and what a more optimal number would be A good tech writer should know the skill level of the user base and write at that level sure I m just pointing out that we all write with a lot of assumptions and sometimes those assumptions can work against us But overall yes think in choosing whether to be tech savvy or not it works more in favor of the tech writer to have technical skills Thanks for your comment Char James Tanny June 27 2008 at 10 44 am This is probably just semantics in one of the comments you use the following example For the tech savvy writer it s easy to say For optimal viewing size adjust your screen resolution to 1024 X 768 or higher But for a tech writer who is not as tech savvy he or she will more naturally realize that some users may not even know what screen resolution is much less how to adjust it and what a more optimal number would be I m tech savvy but would only use the first example if my AUDIENCE was tech savvy And it seems to me that a tech writer with less experience would find it easier to write adjust your screen resolution because a SME told them to not understanding that not everyone knows what that means don t think their tech savviness has anything to do with it After all once they learn how to set their screen resolu tion they re more tech savvy but not necessa
15. experienced writers If we trained someone they will just leave in 2 years anyway If there is a market somewhere for new TW s I d love to hear about it as know several who need more experience but no one in my area wants to take them on Pingback Lots of Things to Blog About and No time Idiotprogrammer Mary July 7 2008 at 9 39 am Great post Especially the things about Objective style and Single sourcing as the answer to everything are just what I ve been thinking about for a while How can you single source and keep a subjective style at the same time This is what is really bothering me don t want us writers to become machines writing the same day after day Click here Click there This will end up in bad documentation and bad user experience But in the end you want also a documentation that is somewhat standardized so that you can reuse it and translate it at lower cost Has someone any ideas or approaches on how bringing these opposites together Or aren t they opposite anyway Pingback Technical Communication Minnesota State University Mankato MSU Pingback monkeyPi s Law at monkeyPi jason August 3 2008 at 4 13 am im studying to become a technical writer and i would really appreciate some help If anyone has any pointers they can give me i would really take it to heart And maybe even chat with me and let me know how the technical writing world turns Thank you
16. figure out how complicated software applications work without any instructional materials be cause you re writing the instructional materials And as you say there are wide ranges of technical material from books on programming in Visual Studio to guides on using Hotmail However there is a curse that comes with knowledge which I wrote about here The curse of knowledge is that when we know something it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it This can work against us when writing instructional material For example lets say you re creating video tutorials and the videos are somewhat large so users need to adjust their screen resolution if the videos don t fit on their screen For people familiar with computers adjusting screen resolution is nearly as easy as Changing a channel on your TV But do you think your Mom knows how to change 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 9 of 17 14 15 her screen resolution If you tell her to right click her Desktop will she realize what the Desktop is Moreover once she gets to the screen resolution tab will she know what to do For the tech savvy writer it s easy to say For optimal viewing size adjust your screen resolution to 1024 X 768 or higher But for a tech writer who is not as tech savvy he or she will more naturally realize that some us
17. go It went something like this some of it may have got lost in translation If you ve been teaching for 20 years did you teach the same thing each year for 20 years or did you learn from each year of teaching and teach 20 different things over that 20 years Number 4 depends on the industry and the audience There are some areas where domain knowledge is critical and others where little or no domain knowledge can be A Good Thing TM If you re writing about financial stuff to Mum and Dad investors you may not need the level of financial industry experience that someone writing for high level investment and banking companies may need Rhondas last blog post Outlook Delay outbound mail 12 w0 June 27 2008 at 8 00 am It s not such a bad thing if you re technically challenged So are most of your users Come on Tom this is malarky think at least a quarter of my users are MSEE MSCS types The reality is 1 Complex product documentation requires that the TW understand the user oriented fundamentals before being 7 of 17 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 8 of 17 able to document the product In the hardware software tools etc marketplace there are a A LOT of complex prod ucts By virtue we can t go around telling technical writers that they don t have to be technically savvy when a siz able portion of the
18. irst ever She has been using something called a mailstation until now and has NO concept of what point and click means or that you have to press enter after typing something into a form Working with her brings back memories of having everything disappear off my screen back when first learned Word in 1994 and the Eureka moment when after retyping the same document 6 times finally noticed the little rectangles along the bottom of my screen and discovered all 6 copies were alive an well and that could have gone to dinner 4 hours earlier always try to take some new computer course every year just so keep that slightly confused feeling fresh in my mind for when its time to explain some new product or tool to everyone who considers me their geek think it help make me a better writer Very nice article ESS Pingback one man writes Recently Read BE Tom Foran Y July 1 2008 at 12 54 am Bibhu really enjoyed reading your comment Sorry for the slow response here just getting around to blogging tonight Your question Does your post mean that most companies are wrong is one that got me thinking In my post don t say that domain knowledge isn t important I m say that domain knowledge is more important than technical skills But I m generalizing here and all jobs are different For some jobs technical skills might be 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths abou
19. nal blog demonstrating your knowledge of technical communication can be a powerful tool for getting an edge on other job candidates It can also serve as a tool for professional develop ment and keep you enthusiastic about your career 6 Technical writing academics are disconnected with the profession and only have a tenuous idea about the actual practice of technical writing Many academics started out as technical writers and worked for years doing the same things we did Are we practition ers so vain that we think the industry is rapidly changing from year to year so much so that intelligent people who spend years immersed in texts studies journals and experiments have no idea what our jobs involve Academics may not be totally fluent with the latest tools but that doesn t mean they re disconnected with technical writing practices and chal lenges See this related post Reflections on Allison Reynold s Talk on Job Skills for the Workplace 7 You can t have voice or style in technical writing It has to be objective And the fewer contractions the 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt better All writing has voice You don t have to remove all sense of humanity from your writing A writer who uses contractions moves toward conversational style and truly has voice will provide a better experience for the frustrated u
20. om recruiters and companies at all is because of my extensive techni cal knowledge in specific areas There are far fewer jobs out there then there used to be Lose your job for six months and see what happens Anyone who actually WANTS to go into this field really needs to be familiar with IPv4 and v6 and have some knowl edge of one or two key scripting languages or a high level language The more knowledge the better Many TW jobs around these days require a CS degree or a minor It s unrealistic to assert otherwise Shashank July 13 2012 at 3 36 am My boss hired me as a Tech writer on this one alone Happened in an interview Delhi India Boss Why do need to hire you because you re the best as per your idiom He referred to my self explaining writeup on interview form stating that am good with words and tech since Till now write help manuals for my team Me let me be frank was pissed a lot due to delays no lunch and what not No wonder the developed product is in reverse gear on the highway towards success just because couldn t get what you said how do you expect other users over the world to sit through that dreaded manual you would ve created He was on his rhetoric best asking parroted questions without even caring for what I said Boss eh look seeing down a piece of paper that read Technical writers are last to hire and first to fire He re peated it Me Was that an idiom you wanted
21. on sorry about that updated the post to be more accurate think your story was right above one from Anne and just confused the two Thanks again for submitting this on WriterRiver com BEE Tom Bsa a June 26 2008 at 9 20 am John agree that recruiters are more bent on tools than industry knowledge for the most part However think they too are caught up in the tool myth We know that most writers can learn a company s tools in a relatively short time That said guess only half believe this myth Some of the more powerful tools can take a long time to master For example being able to open up an image in Photoshop and completely manipulate it is not a skill to underestimate Or being able to customize a webhelp skin or create a CSS file that makes your web design pop These are skills that take a long time to learn Thanks for pointing this out justelise June 26 2008 at 9 45 am The only thing could think of to add to the list is that people think all Technical Writers are grammar experts Depending on their background and education their skills as editors can vary greatly Having the ability to create solid documentation does not always mean that editing other people s words will come very easily Of course there are a myriad of books style guides and grammar usage guides to help but one should not assume that every Technical Writer started their life as Undergrad English or Linguistics majors Furthermo
22. re one should not assume that every talented writer editor will have the aptitude for technical writing or creating documentation Not everyone can easily adjust to writing for a very wide audience and not everyone can describe technical processes in plain English with success 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 10 Kristin June 26 2008 at 11 41 am Love that you debunked the myth that technical writing has to be objective and impersonal The point of technical writing is that it s supposed to be helpful to the user whether it s an end user or specifications for database changes Most people don t even read instructions anymore because they re so bad that users don t know half of what their products can do write instructions for my mother in law to help her with her computer or digital TV remote She s over 80 isn t dumb but has no time to read bad instructions There s a reason the KISS and for Dummies books are so popular they boil down very technical information in many cases to make it easy for people to learn Not sure why it s so difficult to make that available for everything I m not even a technical writer but know good instructions when see them 11 Rhonda June 26 2008 at 9 41 pm Great list Number 3 is a variation of one heard when did teacher training oh so many years a
23. rily a better writer It has to do with experience which is discounted in myth 3 A more experienced tech writer tech savvy or not would know to write for the audience not themselves Or maybe I m just defensive because I m one of your pet peeves since my bio states that have more than 25 years of experience Char James Tannys last blog post An Event Apart Boston 2008 ended today EE Tom Fe Y June 27 2008 at 12 30 pm 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 10 of 17 16 Char And it seems to me that a tech writer with less experience would find it easier to write think we use the term experience loosely What you mean in the above sentence is a tech writer with less audi ence awareness or a tech writer with less skill There are plenty of tech writers with a lot of experience who are still bad writers This is why dislike the term expe rience so much Not only is it vague it s also a rhetorical fallacy an appeal to authority For example John so and so has 45 years of experience as a technical writer What he says must be true Actually no There s no argument behind that Experience itself is not an indicator of ability As an analogy look at basketball have 27 years of experience playing basketball still am not as good as some
24. s about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 2 of 17 bleshooting their tools strategizing help deliverables training new users formatting and laying out their content updat ing existing content meeting with project team members and occasionally playing ping pong 2 You can t get a job in technical writing unless you have technical writing samples but you won t have samples until you have a job in technical writing Don t believe this for an instant You re surrounded by technology your iPod computer DVD player microwave cell phone BlackBerry and everything else Download a trial version of some help authoring tool or even just open up Mi crosoft Word Write instructions for something Find an open source application with poor instructions and rewrite them You don t have to create an entire user manual Just give your potential employer some evidence of your capability 3 A technical writer who has years of experience is more knowledgeable than one with fewer years of expe rience This myth is turning into my pet peeve How many bios have you seen that begin Joe has 15 years of experience or Kate has over 20 years of experience as a technical writer Experience means nothing unless learning is taking place can go to my same job for 15 years do the exact same tasks use the exact same tools never taking any cre ative risks or moving into
25. ser who seeks human help rather than cold robotic formalese The talk that changed me forever was this keynote by Kathy Sierra at SXSW where she explains the need for human qualities in help material when users in desperate frustration finally click the help button If you want to sound like a robot eliminate all contractions from your writing What tone do you think users respond better to 8 Technical writers aren t allowed to contact users directly They should get their information through the product manager customer support and marketing Here we see yet another wrong idea that will only put up roadblocks for worthwhile help Joe Sokohl clarified this princi ple at Doc Train West 2008 calling it the Kobayashi Maru principle a reference from Star Trek He says you have to throw aside the idea that you can t contact users Without this contact and the information you can gather from users you re hopelessly doomed to write instructional material they don t want 9 You can single source your material into all the formats your audience needs if you just learn the right tool or technology When you learn to structure your content with DITA you can magically transform all your content into every format your users need NOT The type of instructions you write for a one page quick reference guide varies from the kind of style you need for an iPhone or for a long manual While agree that you can single source online help to a soft
26. t Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 12 of 17 more important and for others domain knowledge It really just depends But part of the evidence for my assertion comes from research by Doug Davis linked to him in the post see 4 Here s an excerpt from his writing He says industry experience is now the most significant factor an employer looks for Why is that Well technical communicators were using a lot more tools ten or fifteen years ago That made it pretty tough to find someone who knew the exact tool set that employers needed Now if you know Word InDesign and Flare you should be good to go tools are just easier to use and more powerful than they were back then So a typical employer s expectation is that technical communicators worth their pay should be able to catch up on almost any tool pretty quickly The net result is that it doesn t cost an employer very much to train a new person to use a tool Maybe it means a day or two of less than usual productivity that s it What costs employers a whole bunch of money is training new technical communicators in the industry about which they re going to be writing If were to name all the tools know it would include a long list Photoshop Dreamweaver RoboHelp SnagIt Paint Shop Pro WordPress Captivate Camtasia Flare Word Filezilla RSS HTML XML InDesign Skype Levelator Pamela for Skype Aud
27. ware manual the idea gets taken too far See this related post by Gordon McLean DITA Is Not the Answer 10 You have to be quite tech savvy to be a good technical writer Actually when you become so tech savvy that you can t imagine users not understanding how to disable a popup blocker or not knowing how to do a simple task when you are stunned at users who double click when they should single click or who single click when they should double click at this point you lose some ability to write for the lowest common de nominator It s not such a bad thing if you re technically challenged So are most of your users Youll be on a level play ing field and will probably write a help manual that actually speaks their language See this related post The Curse of Knowledge The More You Know the Worse You Become at Communicating that Knowledge Tweet 10 3 of 17 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 4of17 10 Like Related Posts EBUNKING THE BOREDOM MYT 1s i es guma F TECHNICAL WRITING AR et Online Anonymous Becoming a Writer Podcast Debunk Choosing Between From DITA to VITA Rating Sites Em Reflections ona ing the Boredom Academic and Cor Tracing Origins and powering Individual Trip to Idaho Myth of Technical porate Life Did Projecting the Fu Voices Writing Make the Wrong ture Choice
28. yth you brought up at the end tech writing is a necessary evil should totally add this to the list How many times have interaction designers and other project members felt that tech writing is an apology for a bad UI don t think any UI can be intuitive enough to never need a manual Even the iPod and iPhone some of the more intuitive applications still have their confusing points like how you authorize your music on a computer af ter the hard drive crashes and so on 10 19 13 11 07 AM 14 Widespread Myths about Technical Writing I d Rather http idratherbewriting com 2008 06 26 myths myths myt 13 of 17 Thanks again for commenting 20 aa Tom 21 July 1 2008 at 1 02 am Esther Thanks for your comment think help authoring almost approaches philosophy in this aspect trying to know the Other One of the best activities technical writers can do is watch a colleague totally unfamiliar with the application try to complete a series of tasks using the instructions you wrote Every time I ve ever done this I ve thought dang need to go back and make that simpler add more screenshots give more explanation Good tech writers who have the time to do this can write for those on the other side of the tech divide I m not say ing it s not possible only that for someone not as tech savvy it may come easier By the way used the word technically challenged This is an entirely
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