There is a danger that the space wars may erupt all over again. Not a war in space, thank goodness but a war about the number of spaces to put after a full stop (or if you are from the USA, after a period). Read more
Tag writing
The Lure of Modular Writing
Since I started being more involved with a specific DITA product, I am seeing opportunities for modular writing everywhere. This may be a case of “when the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail”, but every new prospective technical writing assignment looks to me like an opportunity for a modular approach.
A modular approach to technical writing doesn’t mean adopting a particular technology or tool, it means adopting a different way of thinking about what you write. In an August 2001 article in Technical Communication, Michael Priestley of IBM urged writers to “ditch the book as the basic structure” in order to maximise the potential benefits of content reuse using DITA.
But even without adopting DITA, thinking of content in a more granular way can have benefits. Don’t think I’m writing “three books for this client’s product”, rather think “I’m writing seventy-five topics”. Ask yourself how this material can be split up into smaller stand-alone portions (“chunks”)? Where are the concepts, and where are the procedures? What user steps are needed in more than one situation? What material needs to be repeated in every publication?
You can then decide separately how to assemble those topics into whatever publications and formats are most suitable. There are dozens of different tools to help make that job easier, and each tool has its own pros and cons.
I know that many technical writers think that a modular approach can be artificial and limiting, but I take the opposite view. It liberates technical writers from worrying about the presentation of technical information, so that they can concentrate on getting the content right – timely, accurate, concise, and relevant, and del=ivered as close as possible to the point of need.
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“Mass literacy has been replaced by mass communication, and many people don’t read any more they just watch or listen.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?”
Orwell Prize
I was very pleased to see that there’s an Orwell Prize for political writing in the UK. This year’s winner (for a book) was Professor Peter Hennessy (more), and the BBC 2 Newsnight programme also won a special award. Hennessy’s book, Having It So good: Britain In The Fifties, is on the Macmillan period, and as a child of that era myself I am pleased to see it being given serious recognition.
I was first introduced to Orwell the political essayist when I was at school and I have admired him ever since. I always introduce my students to the rules for good writing that he promulgated in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language”, and challenge them to devise better rules or to demonstrate that his rules are no longer valid. They haven’t succeeded yet. I don’t think many of the students I meet think of Winston Smith when they hear the words “Big Brother”, more’s the pity.
