Publishing and Technical Writing are two separate fields. The notion of a documentation department probably creates the needed umbrella for the two fields. It is my belief that you probably only have enough time to engage in either of the sides of documentation. Unfortunately, I believe that many corporations push their workers toward wearing both hats.
As an example, I'm on a Framemaker listserv. I'm not sure why I joined exactly, but I've learned a lot. As someone who really loves technical writing, the difference becomes stark when the contributors to the list get all excited about getting Framemaker to make their lives easier - making the publishing aspect of the company's documentation needs accurate and efficient. Personally I'd rather concentrate on writing great docs - I'd publish to a .txt file if need be!
technical+writing technical+writer documentation Framemaker publishing
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Thought of the day
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About Me
- Writer Zero
- I'm an old-school engineering drop-out turned kick ass technical writer.
4 comments:
I would argue that, if you use FM or any editor as efficiently and - perhaps even more importantly - consistently, then the publishing part of the job can be largely ignored and the writing part concentrated upon.
But I also think plain text deserves a bigger place in the modern world. There's too much damn mark-up.
Too much damn mark-up.
heh, I never thought of it from that point of view. And yes, I would agree!!
There are probably ~50 paragraph styles in the document I'm working in - we could probably slash it to about 5.
50 styles? Lucky you. Recently, I've been embroiled in documents with 200-300 styles.
No. Really. I only *wish* I were making this up.
dig this man
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