It’s happened to me so many times, I should be used to it by now, but I’m not. I meet people who are involved in product development, and when I try to talk to them about user documentation I get brushed-off with “It’s OK, we do all our user documentation in-house.” “That’s great,” I say, “how many technical writers do you have on staff?”
“Oh no,” they reply, “we don’t have any technical writers, the programmers (or the engineers, or whoever) do it themselves.”
These are intelligent people, who wouldn’t allow anyone other than an experienced and qualified accountant to prepare their company’s balance sheet, or anyone other than a qualified and experienced lawyer to prepare their end-user licence agreement, but they’ll happily entrust preparing their user documentation to someone without any relevant experience or qualifications!
Tag tech writing
A bit of a grumble
Declining writing standards?
Someone on LinkedIn Answers asked the question “Has writing gone the way of the Dodo?” and wrote that he didn’t mean that writing was extinct, just that standards of business writing appear to have declined. He provoked a lot of responses from writers, and his question certainly hit a nerve with me, so here’s what I wrote in reply:
“Mass literacy has been replaced by mass communication, and many people don’t read any more they just watch or listen. I don’t think you can master the complexities of written language – particularly written English – without reading widely or studying deliberately.
Modern school education hasn’t done a good job of teaching the mechanics of English, and I have taught non-specialist undergraduate university students who have come to a class on writing and been unable to explain what an adjective is. “I didn’t think this class was going to be about grammar”, said one. But if you can’t tell what the parts of a sentence are how can you ever hope to write a meaningful one? These students had clearly passed their GCSEs and A-levels even though they didn’t appear to know much about language, and without devaluing their achievements it does suggest that the English language standards expected by examiners can’t be that high.
Technology and market forces also play their part in keeping down the value of writing. There are people out there who will write you 250 words of SEO-focused junk copy for about 5p, making it difficult for professional writers of any kind to charge reasonable rates. My own approach to technical communication makes this aspect of the problem even worse, as I generally find myself telling clients they need to publish fewer words. Shouldn’t that be cheaper?
I am constantly amazed that although people who have Microsoft Excel on their Windows PC don’t immediately think that they can be accountants, everyone who has a copy of Microsoft Word thinks they can be a writer. Worse still, everyone who has a copy of Microsoft Word appears to think that they can be a typographer as well (and don’t get me started on how “ICT Skills” are being taught in UK schools).
So I’d blame the decline in writing standards on a combination of a number of different expectations all coming together – people are offering very cheap writing services, so it’s not worth paying for; there’s a tool on my computer that “does” writing so it must be easy; I passed my exams at school without making much of an effort at writing skills so why should I bother to make an effort now?”
Usability from the trenches
Mark Liberman is a linguist and mathematician at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also has some responsibilities for student accommodation.
He has written a wonderful article about an example of poor usability for a new computer application which was supposed to let students report facilities problems – leaky pipes, blocked drains, or burnt-out light-bulbs – to the facilities management service.
In “When bad interaction happens to good people” on his Language Log blog, Liberman describes what was wrong with the new software and the innovative way in which he addressed the issue – he wrote an “underground guide” in the style of a guide to a computer game!
This story elegantly highlights what tech writers and usability consultants have been trying to say for years: make user tasks the focus of user interactions with systems. Don’t make people struggle guess what the system wants them to do, instead create the system – or at least its UI – so that it anticipates what the users needs are.
Technical Writing blogs
I have just added the details of this blog to Tom Johnson’s Tech Writer Blog Directory.
There are a number of bloggers listed there who I know personally from various conferences and activities (mainly STC-related), including Mark Levinson, Rhonda Bracey, and Sarah O’Keefe, and other names I recognise as being “the usual suspects” (that is, regular contributors) from a number of tech writing related email lists I subscribe to.
The Tool Bar and Grill
Ever since I became a technical writer back in the mid 1990s I have been impressed by the friendly and helpful attitude of almost every single person I’ve met in this profession. I have always benefited from the experiences of my colleagues, and I hope I now do my bit to help other professionals by contributing to various mailing lists and being active in the STC. (By the way, the new STC Europe SIG now has its own web page.)
One of the people I worked with in those early days was a particularly helpful, friendly, and good-natured colleague. He is now writing a blog about free and low-priced tools and utilities that can make your computing life that much easier. I am delighted to recommend Jonathan’s Tool Bar & Grill.
(Now is that one word or two? “tool bar” or “toolbar”? or should it be capitalised as “Toolbar”, or even “Tool Bar”? Answers, on a postcard please, to Tech Writing Pedants Anonymous…)
