radical revamping of techpubs

[poshedly at bellsouth.net]

At the civil engineering firm where my wife has been one of the transportation engineers for almost 20 years, the story is pretty much the same. That is, the engineers are pretty proficient at road design and all that goes into it, but their reports (such as Interstate Justification Reports, or "IJR's", for instance) simply grate on me when I review a draft copy for my wife.

While it's very true that this or that 30 or 40 page report -- complete with graphs, charts and maps -- will hardly be looked at, no one seems to remember the old adage, "If the job is worth doing, it's worth doing right."

They figure that not even another engineer is going to look at this stuff. 

Probably the only things I see correctly presented within the reports are the tech specs. But the rules of grammar, punctuation and presentation simply fly out the window when these babies are assembled before I get one to look at.

Luckily, the ones my wife do are each an improvement over the previous ones.

The firm has no one dedicated to tech writing / tech editing on staff. I've approached the firm about reviewing their reports on a contract basis, but they're not interested -- yet.

-- Ken in Atlanta



-------------- Original message from "Flato, Gillian" <gflato at nanometrics.com>: -------------- 


> This will be a complete train wreck. 
> 
> Here's why: 
> 
> 1. The Developers have no idea how to organize the information 
> 2. When they write, they are completely illiterate. 
> In my company, the Developers write specs for me on each new 
> feature. They are so illiterate, that I always have to go to them and 
> interview them to figure out what the feature actually does. 
> 3. Their knowledge is so advanced that they don't understand the 
> end-users viewpoint 
> I can't tell you how many times I have heard, "You don't have to 
> explain that, they'll know how to do that." I have had to point out 
> countless times that my audience is an end-user new on the job who knows 
> nothing and I have to explain everything to him. 
> 
> You're company may be looking at this because some number cruncher 
> thinks it will save money, but the real cost will be a severe drop in 
> quality, which will cause you to lose customers, lose sales, lose 
> revenue etc. etc. 
> 
> 
> Thank you, 
> 
> 
> Gillian Flato 
> Technical Writer (Software) 
> nanometrics 
> 1550 Buckeye Dr. 
> Milpitas, CA. 95035 
> 408.545.6316 
> 408.232.5911 
> gflato at nanometrics.com 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: framers-bounces+gflato=nanometrics.com at lists.frameusers.com 
> [mailto:framers-bounces+gflato=nanometrics.com at lists.frameusers.com] On 
> Behalf Of Susan Modlin 
> Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 2:42 PM 
> To: mulholland4; framers at lists.frameusers.com 
> Subject: Re: radical revamping of techpubs 
> 
> Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me -- at least as far as the 
> customer is concerned. Although the company might enjoy a short-term 
> savings, they'll pay for it in the longer term in increased support 
> costs (unless they off-shore that too) and customer dissatisfaction. 
> 
> ...Susan 
> 
> ----- Original Message ---- 
> From: mulholland4 
> To: framers at lists.frameusers.com 
> Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 12:54:37 PM 
> Subject: radical revamping of techpubs 
> 
> 
> Hi, 
> I would like to see what the group thinks of this scenario for writing 
> documentation within a company? 
> 
> 1. Remove all existing tech writing staff from techpubs. 
> 2. Replace these with software developers and specialists who know the 
> software inside out and get them to write all of the documentation. 
> These 
> would now be known as Developer-techwriters. (It should be noted that 
> none 
> of these people has English as a first language, despite this being the 
> primary market for the documentation.) 
> 3. Hire editing staff to edit only the language and grammar of the 
> documents 
> written by the software specialists. 
> 
> The reasoning behind this scenario is; that this saves money as the 
> developers know the software, and it is really cheap to get university 
> students to come in and edit. 
> 
> I won't make comments on this just now as i'm sure there are many of us 
> who 
> just want to run screaming! 
> 
> thanks 
> Mulholland 
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