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To begin with, if at all possible, I'd recommend you give each engineer
you will be working with an outline of each document you'd like
written. The outline should include:<br><br>
1. Description of the target reader.<br>
2. General description of the document.<br>
3. List of topics/subtopics in outline form if at all
possible.<br><br>
Offer to interview them to get them started. And/or if you need to,
interview them to create this outline (that is, if you are not sure what
the document should be like, interview them to get an understanding from
them about what they think needs to be written.)<br><br>
In my experience, engineers usually intend to write helpful
documentation, but due to time constraints, motivation or lack thereof,
and innate pedagogical talent, their ability to write useful stuff varies
widely. I would try to provide people with a structure, praise
hugely for any results at all, be grateful for the good stuff, try to
make the not-so-good stuff better and run it back past the authors for
review in a non-judgmental way so they can see the changes you had to
make.<br><br>
Getting engineers to help write documentation is likely to get you more
accurate documentation, but it will take time on your and on their
parts. Usually, for me, it does not save me time, so much as
ensures the content is correct and correctly targeted for
readers.<br><br>
Have fun.<br><br>
- Emily<br>
At 07:26 AM 10/7/2013, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Content-Language: fr-FR<br>
Content-Type: multipart/related;<br>
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Hi,<br>
<br>
A few mechanical engineers have been asked, as part of their varied
workload, to author certain documents in English (How To, Webinars,
software essentials) in the near future.<br>
<br>
Working with authors who are not formally trained is a new experience for
me. I am wondering how to best define their tasks and the tasks of my
technical writing group who will work together to ensure quality
documents. For example:<br>
<br>
· I could provide the
engineers with templates in FrameMaker and an introduction to the basics
of technical writing and English grammar and bring them to write good
documents over time. Some formal training in technical writing could be
offered. The technical writers would then review the final documents
(container and content) to ensure the overall quality of the
documents.<br>
<br>
· Or, maybe the role of
the engineers should be to write rough content within guidelines (get the
ideas and workflows on paper), and my team of technical writers could be
responsible for formatting the content and expressing their
ideas/workflows correctly in English. This would take much less time for
the engineer (less of a learning curve).<br>
<br>
Do you have some experience in this matter? Any hints for what may work
best?<br>
<br>
Many thanks. <br>
<br>
Here in Quebec City, Canada autumn is in full color. Mother Nature at her
very best.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Stephen O'BRIEN</b><br>
Coordonnateur à la documentation et rédacteur technique senior |
Documentation Coordinator and Senior Technical Writer<br>
InnovMetric Logiciels | Software<br>
<a href="mailto:sobrien@innovmetric.com">sobrien@innovmetric.com</a><br>
<b>T </b>(1) 418.688.2061<br>
<b>F </b>(1) 418.688.3001<br>
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