By Susan Haire | STC Associate Fellow
Many years ago, my family and I did the tourist gig in Washington, DC. We visited most of the Smithsonian museums (some twice), but the one that impressed me the most was the Air and Space Museum—not the sleek space capsules or vintage planes, but the Apollo 11 exhibit, specifically, the thick tomes of paper, taking up two to three feet of space on a shelf, that documented everything from the engineering specifications to the flight manuals that astronauts took to the moon to help them fly their spacecraft.
I’m not saying all that paper made it into space, but a good chunk of it did. Think of the daunting task of reading all those pages—not just reading them but learning their content. Think of the dedicated writers who created those pages. Think of the weight!
We’ve come a long way since those days. Now most of our documentation is produced online. Those moon-landing manuals could now fit on a single flash drive.
Fast forward a decade or so. I’m sitting on the advisory board for the technical communication diploma program at our local college, and the committee is discussing low enrollment. One member finally said, “Let’s face it; technical communication just isn’t sexy.”
I thought about those many inches of paper in Washington. What I should have done was jumped up and indignantly cried, “It is, too, sexy!” But I didn’t. I hesitated, and the moment was lost.
So today, I want to correct that mistake. I want to prove to you that our profession is a sexy profession, one we can be proud to acknowledge, and to provide you with ammunition the next time someone asks you why you work in such a “boring” career.
Boring? Hah! What other career allows its practitioners to employ the skills of not one, but many professions? Yes, grammarian and spell checker are the obvious ones. After all, grammar and spelling are the foundation of our work, and in a way the very definition of a writer, no matter what kind. But did you know technical communicators are also detectives, diplomats, entertainers, psychologists, teachers, cryptographers, and graphic designers, to name a few?
Let’s take these titles one at a time.
- Detective: Have you ever been handed a piece of software and been told, “We need the user manual by the end of next week, but don’t bother the programmers because they’re on another project. Notes? No, I don’t think they kept any notes.”? So what do we do? We put on our deer-stalker hat, load up the software, and start digging. We explore what the program does, figure out how users would use it, and tunnel into the “what ifs” to create a troubleshooting chapter (because we all know the only time many users actually read the manual is if something goes wrong). These skills aren’t restricted to software manuals. All documentation, whether policies, advertising, or simple instructions, depends on audience analysis. And what is audience analysis if not detective work?
- Diplomat: Few of us work in the political arena. Most of us don’t need to write carefully about sensitive subjects that could affect national security. But diplomacy isn’t limited to government offices. In the world of technical communication, diplomacy is most often demonstrated in the art of presenting warnings and error messages in a positive tone. No user wants to get a message that says, “You failed to do X” or “We told you not to do Y, but you did it anyway. Can’t you read?” And no, we probably wouldn’t write the last one that way, but we do try to find more positive, diplomatic ways of admonishing our users. In the first case, we would probably reword the message to something like, “To avoid this issue in the future, remember to do X.” In the second … well, I’ll leave that to your imagination.
- Entertainer: We need to keep our readers engaged. There’s nothing that puts me to sleep faster than pages and pages of dense paragraphs. I pity my reader and break things up with white space, page design, images. Online, I include color and motion, mini-videos and, where appropriate, humor.
- Psychologist: We’re back to audience analysis. We are familiar with the traits of adult learners and recognize that not all users learn in the same way. We provide bulleted lists for text learners, annotated graphics for visual learners, even audio overlays for aural learners. We try to incorporate different approaches to the same topic, in hopes that our users will find one that resonates with them.
- Teacher: We don’t only have to write training manuals to be teachers. Anything we write, from corporate policies to the monographs accompanying prescription medication, is at its heart designed to teach someone something.
- Cryptographer: I’m not talking about solving coded messages here. I’m talking about interpreting the handwritten source material from your subject matter experts, or edits from your reviewers. Many times, I’ve had to recruit other writers to try and figure out what a word or phrase actually says, and I lament the days when Handwriting stopped being considered a valuable subject in schools. My grandmother had a beautiful flowing script. I read her old letters with great pleasure. Then I look at the Christmas card from my son and am glad that it is labeled to “Mom and Dad.”
- Graphic designer: We may not be formally trained in graphic design, but we employ the techniques, sometimes without even realizing it. Page design, job aid fonts, and image placement are all critical to getting our message across in a way that will not bore users and will make sure they can easily pick out the most important information from the background “noise” of explanatory text. A great example is airplane safety cards. Very few words are visible, but the messages on the card are clear and easy to follow.
Still not convinced? How about this?
Technical communication has been around for thousands of years. Do you think the pyramids were built without instructions? Engineering and architectural drawings are a type of technical communication, designed to relay information to other engineers and architects and builders. How about the first cave man who painted pictures on the walls of his home? One idea discussed on creativedisplaysnow.com theorizes that cave paintings were used as a manual for instructing others as to what animals were safe to eat. Even if that’s not the case, someone had to explain to their friends how to make the pigments used to color the paintings, and that’s technical communication.
Our job, at its simplest level, is to help people do what they need to do quickly and easily. A colleague of mine once said that if your users notice the technical writing, then you’re not doing it right. Technical communication is subtle. We fix the unfixable, explain the unexplainable, all in such a way that nobody notices. Unless you’re writing a book that specifically explains something, what we do and how we do it should remain invisible.
Technical communication comes in all forms. Think of the London subway system map. At first all you see are lots and lots of colored lines, but as you focus and locate your station, the map begins to make sense. Travellers can find their way from any part of London to any other part just by consulting a deceptively simple map that can fit in their pocket. That’s technical communication at its best.
If you want more examples, just look at the “My Job” column in STC’s Intercom magazine. Over the years, I’ve read about technical communicators at Cirque du Soleil, in Antarctica, at the Cheesecake Factory, in casinos, at Disney, in hospitals, factories, museums, and prisons. And, of course, at NASA.
I could go on forever, but you get the idea. Ours is a versatile, wide-ranging profession, with applications in all walks of life.
So be proud of what you do. Encourage those reluctant technical communication students who question the wisdom of choosing this profession. Remind yourself that the world wouldn’t have come this far without us.
I’d like to leave you with one of my fondest fantasies. How many of you have seen the James Bond movie Goldfinger? There’s a scene where Q, Bond’s long-suffering quartermaster, is explaining the features of the car Bond will be driving, including the oil spill and ejector seat. The scene ends with Bond’s enigmatic smile, but I have a vision of the few seconds after the camera stops rolling, when Q hands Bond the user manual. What? Do you really think Bond remembered all those instructions just from that five-minute conversation? You bet he read the manual. His life depended on it!
Technical communication isn’t sexy? Think again.
SUSAN HAIRE has been a technical communicator for over 30 years, and has written everything from computer manuals to herbal diet brochures to government policies and procedures. She is currently a lead writer for Manitoba Public Insurance, a major insurance company in western Canada. A long-time member of STC, Susan has presented workshops at the Annual Conference and to her local chapter, including a session on this topic. Susan is a passionate advocate of all things “tech comm” and can be reached at susan_haire@hotmail.com.
