Those in the first group, the novelists, are excited by words - and when they realise they are never going to win a Pulitzer, they create corporate style guides instead. Over lunch, they discuss the proper use of semi-colons.
The second group, the engineers, see the poetry in a hundred lines of code - and when they realise they are never going to build the 'next big thing' web app, or even work on something more mundane like a CRM tool written in VB, they document the APIs that unleash the creativity of others instead. Over lunch, they discuss the proper use of angle brackets.
Of course, the best tech writers (and, again, it has been my pleasure to know a few) have one foot in both camps. And as well as being novelists and engineers, they are also teachers, driven by a desire to learn new things and a sincere wish to share their newly-acquired knowlege with others.
What kind of a tech writer are you?
I'm actually both technical and a writer, but I rein in the writer part and emphasise the technical part as much as I can at work. There's a time and place for the writer part but, most of the time, technical accuracy is more important than perfect prose when there's a deadline to meet. And, there's always a deadline to meet.
One sign of a good technical writer, in my experience, is curiosity.
Posted by: Mark M | June 14, 2006 11:03 PM | Permalink to Comment