By Daniel Maddux | Member
The myth
As technical communicators, we sometimes complain that our abilities aren’t taken seriously by the companies for which we work. “They just don’t understand what a technical communicator does,” we say. Perhaps, if we could explain it to them, we could counter the myths that keep some of us from being taken as seriously as we should be.
At the recent Turbomachinery Symposium in Houston, I spoke with an engineering manager about his company’s documentation. “Well, we just can’t outsource it,” he was saying. “I mean, you have to be an engineer to write about this stuff, right?”
His statement didn’t jive with my experience, and I told him so. “Let me tell you about what I’ve seen,” I said.
“Coming out of college with a professional writing degree, I hired on with a small technical writing company. I was put onto a project working on complicated finance documentation with CPAs and high-level accountants. Now, I had no background in finance or accounting in college. Those may have been my weakest subjects. And yet I was able to step in, hit the ground running, and immediately begin writing the most complex documentation that the department had ever produced.”
“So it’s really not about having in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. It’s about having the kind of technical-writing training you need to write and organize information. If you have that, you can write in any field.”
“Hmmm,” the manager said, scratching his grizzled chin. “Why don’t you take a look at the documentation we have here. If you think you can make a substantive improvement, go ahead and email.” He gave me a contact within his company, and I provided them with expertise on improving their machinery procedures.
The manager had brought up a common myth about technical writing. The myth says that you need to be a subject matter expert in order to write about a particular topic. I’m not sure why this myth still exists, but it’s out there, especially in such economic sectors as oil and gas.
You often see job listings for technical communicators that demand, for example, “5 years of experience in the gas business.” What exactly does that mean? If I have been writing marketing brochures for compressors for five years, why would I know anything about writing installation procedures for pipelines? Yes, these two kinds of documentation are in the same economic sector, but they really have nothing to do with each another, even in terms of subject matter. What the company is often saying is “we want an engineer who writes well.”
This is really one of the most damaging technical writing myths out there, both to companies and to the technical communicators they employ (or don’t employ!). I’ll show you why.
The machine
Let’s say that you are an engineer and I am a tech writer. As an engineer, you are highly trained in using and maintaining Machine X. You know Machine X inside and out, every wire and bolt.
Every day you come to your workspace, set Machine X up on the counter, and turn it on using a switch on the wall. The machine runs along all day, doing what it’s supposed to do.
As a tech writer, I watch you operate Machine X every day. I see you coming in, picking up the machine, setting it on the counter, and flipping it on.
Finally I say to you, “Hey, why are they paying you your salary, when all you do is come in, set up the machine, and turn a switch? I could do that just as well as you!”
And, truth be told, I would likely be right, to a certain extent. Assuming I’m a smart and competent person, I could pick up the machine and flip the switch about as well as you.
But then one day something goes wrong. I set the machine on the counter, flip the switch, and nothing happens.
I’m lost. I don’t know the first thing about fixing this complex machine. All the parts are sitting there, the gears and the cover and the power cord. But it’s just a heap of junk if I don’t know how to analyze the machine and determine how to make it useable again. To do that, I would need the engineering training you have with that machine.
Now let’s turn the story around.
The means
As a technical communicator, I’m not trained in the use of complicated engineering equipment. However, I am trained in the use of complex information.
I’ve watched subject matter experts write documentation. If they’re naturally bad writers, what they write won’t make sense at all. However, if they have some natural writing talent, they may be able to write the simple stuff pretty well. “Step 1—Open the jar. Step 2—Spoon out some jelly.”
However, what does a subject matter expert do when confronted with truly complex information, like when the user is supposed to do one thing when one condition is met, but something entirely different if an alternate condition is met? When the individual parts of a complicated paragraph need to be analyzed and put into a usable table or a clear list of standardized bullets? When the information is just too dense, the sentences too long and complex for the user to efficiently use the information?
It takes technical-writing training to handle these situations.
I don’t know any subject matter experts, no matter how much natural writing talent they have, that can adequately address these truly complicated writing situations. It’s the same issue that comes up when dealing with Machine X. I can turn on the machine as well as you can, but when things go wrong, I don’t know how to fix it.
Likewise, a subject matter expert who has not been through intensive training as a technical writer may be able to write some of the simple documentation fairly well. But when it comes to the really complicated information, the non-writer will not know how to handle it. Like the broken machine, which has all of its parts but isn’t usable, complicated information just sits there in an unusable heap until someone trained to get it working comes along.
Now, there’s a caveat here. Just because someone calls him or herself a technical communicator does not mean that person has the training needed to organize complicated information. There are good and bad tech writers, just as there are good and bad engineers. But if the writer is good and well trained, he or she can step into any field, any economic sector, and immediately begin producing better documents than what the subject matter expert would have been able to write.
More myths
The idea that only a subject matter expert can write documentation for a particular field is not the only myth we deal with as technical communicators. On the other side of the coin is another lie, the one that says, “Ah, anyone can write.” As Sarah O’Keefe recently wrote in the September/October 2010 Intercom, “When someone says, ‘Anyone can write,’ they really mean, ‘Our writing standards are so low that anyone can meet them.’” This is the kind of myth you can only counter by showing, theoretically and quantitatively, what kind of value a trained technical communicator brings to the table.
Still another myth that we contend with is that using a technical writer takes longer than having a subject matter expert write the documentation. But go back and think about that broken Machine X. How long will it take to fix that machine? For someone trained with that machine, perhaps not long. For someone not trained with that machine, a long time, if ever. That complex information will stay broken and unusable until a trained technical communicator comes along.
In summary, a well-trained technical communicator helps companies solve information problems that would otherwise remain problems indefinitely. This is an extremely valuable ability. We should be proud of it.
One of the main reasons technical communicators complain about not being taken seriously is that we don’t really understand and stand for the value that we provide. Even if we understand it for ourselves, we sometimes have trouble explaining the importance of our work to non-writers. Technical communication training is equivalent to engineering training or other kinds of training. Use this concept to explain how valuable you really are.
DANIEL MADDUX (dmaddux@elitedocumentation.com) owns Elite Documentation Incorporated (www.elitedocumentation.com), a technical writing company based in Houston, TX. Aside from researching how technical communicators can best meet their clients’ needs, Daniel enjoys his volunteer work and martial arts training.
