Guys and Gals!
I propose a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Technical Writers!!! The attack of the Fakes!!!
This is planned to be a rant post - I wanna know where are all the writers? In the current crop of TWs and IDs them people aren't techy - some of the geniuses probably can't configure a USB drive (sachchi!) and writing - wo kya hota hai? And they can't write!! Just today some creature called to check on a person who claimed to have been a TW in Ajeeb-O-Gareeb!!! This is AFTER the girl joins the place!!! People who hire such crap, deserve to be penalized - deduct i USD for each error that the writer makes!!! Wow!
What are the ingredients that we need to add to a human and do "mumbo jumbo chingling wingling hoosh woossshhhh" and sprinkle some (un)holy water to result in a GOOD technical writer?
Aptitude - but how do you check for that?
Attitude - aah! the proverbial double-edged sword!
Ownership - I am currently in a place where the stuff is all historical kachra (garbage!!) and we do maintaining work 70% of the time and baaki time we create kachra for future generations! (Honestly tho I hope not!)
Clarity - But how the heck do you gauge that?!
My editors, readers, peers, reviewers all compliment me on my work - no I am showing off ( you know I prefer the school wala terms show-offing!) but I want to know what constitutes good work?! Why person A does a better job then B?
In office the non-techy-tech-writer dishes out clean crisp clear stuff that is really to the point and the engineer who I think cannot imagine a sentence without at least three clauses, one but, one therefore, and maybe a therein thrown in for good measure, can confuse you by giving you directions to YOUR OWN HOME!!!
Besides sounding like a professional-narcisstic (not in that way silly!) I really want to know.
We have this creature at work who is a candidate for a series-of-hateful-spiteful-mean-evil-posts. Ash too has a list of woes and we will do that later. Happy dear has never to my knowledge ever had trouble with people professionally (esp. the females ;-D) so I am quite certain he will be quite left out on that series!!!
I am tired of people thinking she knows FrameMaker, she knows RohoHelp, she knows Epic therefore she is GOOD TW!!! He worked in Bindview, he worked in Oracle therefore he is a good TW! Hello? I know Madonna, I know Loius Armstrong, I know Jackie Chan so does that make me a kung-fu-kicking-jazzy-pop-singing-TW? I am so PISSED!!! We need some GOOD TW PR else this profession is gonna lose to the attack of the FAKES!!! When RoboHelp dies what will happen to the brilliants?!
Back to our-resident-strange-persona at work - she has HOARDED TW books and if you were to see her works you would wonder if she ever opens them!!! Reminds me of Jughead (Archie comics) who slept with books under his pillow to prepare for the test ....
Help me and this domain pleeeeaaasssseee!!!
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