By Daniel Maddux
Growing up in rural central Missouri, Don Cunningham had no greater dream than to work at Nub Baldwin’s Conoco gas station. Coming from a family of farmers and mechanics, he assumed his life’s work would be in a related field. Little did Don know that he would become an academic, an expert technical communicator, the author of several books, and an ATTW and STC Fellow.
When I asked Don what initially sparked his interest in technical communication, he told me that it definitely wasn’t planned out. He had no intention of going to college when he graduated from high school. Instead, he joined the military. The Korean War was going on at the time, and on his seventeenth birthday, he joined the National Guard because although the U.S. Army would accept him, he couldn’t knowingly be assigned to a combat zone until he was eighteen. After a year in the National Guard, he joined the U.S. Navy, serving four years—three on sea duty (Korea, Sea of Japan, East China Sea, South Pacific) on a destroyer and two auxiliary oil and gas tankers. He was on the crew of the USS Kishwaukee (AOG 8) that helped supply the French Foreign Legion in April and early May 1954 during the battle of Dien Bien Phu in what was then French Indo-China. His last year in the Navy he was stationed at Camp Elliott, a U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Retraining Command in San Diego.
“I probably learned more about writing in the military than I did in any course in college,” he said.
Don became a yeoman, which involved a lot of clerical work. His main responsibility was to write the ship’s daily orders and military orders by senior officers. The officers would jot down notes, and he would write those notes up into orders. The officers would send back revisions, and eventually they produced a finalized order. He realized how crucial clarity of expression and purpose was. The orders not only had to be clear, but also, they had to be virtually impossible to misunderstand.
He said it was funny how all of that led to a career in technical communication. “Everything in my life seems to have been idiosyncratic and unpredictable,” he said.
Growing into a Career
I asked Don how he got involved in technical communication as a profession. He shared that after he got out of the Navy, he attended the University of Missouri. His first declared major was physical education, and he was considering coaching as a profession. However, that year Mizzou hired a new coach, Frank Broyles. When Coach Broyles came in, he got rid of most of the assistant coaches, and Don realized that there was no job security in coaching.
Don started trying to figure out what he wanted to do for a career. He became a history major, but that lasted only one semester. He thought more about what he enjoyed most, and what his best grades were in. The clear answer eventually came: English. He studied American and British literature and eventually earned a doctorate in that field. He thought he would have a career in literature.
When Don was a doctoral student, he taught literature courses, including a 300-level American Literature course. He may have been the first doctoral student assigned to teach a 300-level literature course at Mizzou. But even then, he was being exposed to technical communication. He edited research reports for the University of Missouri School of Nursing and School of Medicine to make some extra money. Those reports, stemming from research grants from what was then the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, received commendations of excellence, especially for the editing portion of the work. He thought to himself, “I can really do this.”
“I was eventually asked to teach English 60, which was a basic technical writing course for engineering, agriculture, and forestry majors,” Don stated. The Director of Freshman Composition and Rhetoric courses, Willoughby Johnson, thought the students would respect him.
Academic Journeys
From there, Don completed three degrees from the University of Missouri, got married, and had a son. After getting his doctorate, Don was hired on at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. There, he was asked to revamp and improve their undergraduate service courses in technical writing. After he moved to Morehead State University in Kentucky as Director of Writing Courses, Texas Tech sought him out. “They hired me as a tenured professor, which was a rarity in academia in those days,” Don said. He got the job because they needed someone to direct their technical communication program and mentor faculty.
Auburn University eventually came calling, offering to hire Don as a tenured professor so that he could build their technical communication program and develop faculty. He had really enjoyed working at Texas Tech, but his wife was ready to get out of that semi-arid flatland. So, he took the job, and stayed on at Auburn until he retired as Emeritus Professor of English in 2005.
When he got to Auburn, he told them that he didn’t want to teach literature courses. “The department head was mystified—how could someone with a PhD in literature not want to teach literature courses?” These days, the attitude that he had back then is more common among technical communication professors, Don stated.
Don learned a lot from working in academia. “English departments are often the largest in any given university. That gives them a lot of power,” Don said. He thinks that it’s fine for a technical communication program to be within the English department if the literature people aren’t dictating the content of technical communication courses. Once a program gets established, a pecking order invariably appears. Even when the technical communication program is moved out of the English department and allies with rhetoric and composition, there tends to be a pecking order. Typically, those professors who emphasize the practical side of technical communication tend to have a place near the bottom of the pecking order.
“Departments of rhetoric are overpopulated, and it appears to be showing in the job market,” Don stated. “I think we should watch out and learn from what the departments of English and Rhetoric have done. They have produced more graduates than the job market can absorb. That’s not the case with practitioners. I’m kind of a utilitarian in that matter. You have to have street credibility. The better faculty I know have that.”
Don definitely thinks that it’s important for professors to practice what they preach (meaning that they should have some practical technical communication experience in addition to teaching). “I don’t think that practicing technical communication is subordinate to teaching, or even research. It’s not a sideline or an alternative to summer teaching. Faculty in many other disciplines—music, art, anthropology, geology, marketing, theatre, veterinary medicine—engage in practice as a matter of course.”
Professional Associations
Don benefitted from his memberships in professional organizations during his career. Some organizational memberships, however, were not meant to be. When he was in grad school, one of his papers was accepted by the Modern Language Association (MLA). However, just before their conference, he was informed that he had to be a member of the MLA to read his paper. The membership was pretty pricey, so he decided against paying up. As a result, he never read that paper.
On the other hand, some other organizations offered Don a better ROI. In 1969, he went to his first meeting of the Society of Technical Writers and Editors (STWE, a predecessor organization of STC). For the first time, he met people who were doing technical communication as teachers. He attended the STWE’s annual conference and was exposed to many of the thought leaders in technical communication, such as John Walter, Hermann Weismann, John Harris, W. Earl “Web” Britton, Jay Gould, Tom Pearsall, and John Mitchell. He was amazed to find out how much research was going on in the field. That was the beginning of his professional identity as a technical communicator.
Eventually, the STWE became STC. Don is a Fellow, and he still maintains his STC membership.
He was a member of some other organizations, such as the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). “Herman Estrin and I edited their first book on technical communication,” Don shared. But he doesn’t maintain his membership with the Council anymore.
His Books
Don has written some high-quality books. I asked him which one I should buy, if I could buy only one. Don answered, “The only one in print is How to Write for the World of Work , now in its 7th edition. It was last published in 2005 by Thomson/Wadsworth. It’s a little long in the tooth, but the principles are still basically sound.” Don and his co-authors Thomas Pearsall and Elizabeth O. Smith updated the information in the book every few years for new editions.
Other than that, Don thought that a good choice might be his and Jeanette Harris’s The Simon & Schuster Guide to Writing (Prentice Hall, 1994/1997). The book was very useful due to its focus on good writing principles across disciplines. However, Don said that when you are pigeonholed as a technical communicator, composition and rhetoric professors and directors of freshman composition sometimes don’t view your books as being applicable to them. However, the book went into a second edition.
How Technical Communication Has Changed
Over the years that Don was updating How to Write for the World of Work, many things changed in technical communication. “Technology went all over the place in terms of writing, editing, gathering materials, and presenting information,” Don stated. When he was first co-writing the book, if he focused too much on technology, he could easily, accidentally, exclude students at low-tech schools by discussing technology too much. Similarly, if he got too specific with hardware or software, students who used different platforms sometimes found it difficult to identify with the examples.
Don thinks that technology impacted the technical communication field in both good and bad ways. On the negative side, when writing tools started coming out, a lot of companies thought that they could simply provide subject matter experts with those tools and reduce their reliance on technical writers. “We certainly know that that’s not true,” Don said. In the profession itself, outsourcing has become a significant trend. Many organizations outsource the technical communication work, trying to cut costs. However, many of the off-shore writers have English as a second or perhaps even a third language. “While they are often whizbangers with the technology, they often have difficulty with English,” Don said.
In Don’s consulting experience, he came across many people who took a course in Dreamweaver or some other popular program, and then were hired as technical communicators. “In many cases, Human Resources is responsible for initial screenings when hiring technical communicators. However, they may have no idea what makes a good technical communicator. Instead, they look for experience with a particular communication technology.”
“On the positive side,” Don said, “computers have taken the pick and shovel work out of revisions. The first six or seven books I wrote were on a typewriter. If I made a mistake or wanted to amplify a point, I had to retype the whole page and sometimes several pages!”
Also, Don stated, you have the opportunity to integrate graphics into your work more smoothly. Twenty-five years ago, you had a professional for every part of the documentation process. Now you have to do the graphics and everything else, since you have the tools to do it. As Gerald Cohen, Don’s co-author of Creating Technical Manuals (McGraw Hill, 1984), states: “Graphics are now equal partners with words.”
What Makes a Good Technical Communicator
Don believes that just being familiar with a particular technology isn’t what determines one’s success as a technical communicator. That being the case, what are the qualities of a good technical communicator?
“There has been a several-decades-long debate over whether the best technical communicator is a subject-matter specialist whom you can teach how to communicate, or whether it’s better to find a technical communicator who can learn the subject matter,” Don said. “In my own experience, in high-tech military work, most tech writers were former military people who had operated the equipment or were knowledgeable about the systems they were writing about, but most couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag.”
You have to pay close attention to terminology. Don once had an experience where he was sure that a writer had used the word “fuze” as a Li’l Abner or Homer Simpson replacement for “fuse.” However, he was working in pyrotechnics, and in pyrotechnics, “fuze” is the correct term. As a result, he looked silly when he “corrected” the spelling. As a writer, Don said, “You have to let the subject-matter expert win the close calls. As an editor, you have to let the writer win the close calls. You want the people you work with to remember you as positive, easy to work with, and please-able.” He said that you have to avoid being perceived as authoritarian or dogmatic, and remain even-tempered. Don’t assume as an editor, you know more than the writer how the document should read.
In regards to core technical communication competencies, Don identified several.
First, eagerness and ability to learn are critical. Not only is it important if you want to continue to develop writing and editing skills, but also to learn about the context of the organization in which you work or for which you are writing. You must always be learning new things, even if they don’t seem to have an immediate application. Having an insatiable curiosity is critical.
Perseverance is also a key trait Don mentioned. You must keep things in order, ready to prod the project along. You must be diligent about detecting the smallest of errors, keeping your focus till the end. You have to persevere, but not be stubborn.
According to Don, a technical communicator must be able to adapt quickly. You have to be able to compose or edit a variety of documents. And when you get word that a document has to be in by next Thursday, you have to be ready to readjust your priorities to get that done.
You also have to be prepared to be a leader, even if you aren’t formally tapped for that responsibility.
You have to be prepared to multi-task. As a writer, you not only must have a clear vision of what you want to say, but you must also understand what the audience needs and expects; as an editor, you must have the ability to hold the writer’s and the audience’s perspectives simultaneously.
You have to be ethical. “That’s a tough one,” Don said. “You have to be dependable. You have to do what you say you are going to do. You have to do what you’re responsible for doing.” And you must always try to avoid biased and other questionably ethical practices.
Don quoted from Robert Johnson’s book, User-Centered Technology: A Rhetorical Theory for Computers and Other Mundane Artifacts: “‘Technical communicators are people who have an affinity for and advocate for users.’ You have to be able to do that.”
Tech Comm Ethics
Don delved more deeply into technical communication ethics. He painted a picture of what ethics looks like (or doesn’t look like) for a technical communicator.
“I can give some examples. There’s always a classic situation of unfavorable details being hidden in plain sight.” Something may warrant a caution or a warning, but it’s not placed where the eye is attracted to it. Writers can bury unfavorable information or statements that reduce a company’s liability in long passages, in footnotes, or in endnotes. They can use ambiguous headings, placing visuals in appendixes or annexes, far removed from where they are discussed. They can present important requirements, restrictions, and so forth in extremely small print (sometimes referred to as “mouse print”).
“It’s unethical not to catch errors,” Don added. He said that graphics with errors are dishonest, even if they are not intentional.
Looking Back
There are a few things Don wishes that he had known or been able to do when he first started his career. He wishes that he had been smart enough to know when someone else really knew more about the subject matter than he did.
There were some process-related improvements he would make to his younger self, also. “You need an editing plan, and you need to communicate that plan. You need the ability to consider more than just the text on the page. You need to consider whom the text will impact, and who will impact that text.”
Don retired from Auburn in 2005 and is now living in a rural area about a mile from the Missouri River in central Missouri, within 20 miles of where he was born and grew up.
Looking back on his career, Don is not disappointed in the least. He summed it up by saying, “I think it’s more than I hoped it would be.”
DANIEL MADDUX is a Technical Writer for Professional Datasolutions, Inc., in Temple, TX. He’s a student in the MS Program in Technical Communication Management at the Mercer University School of Engineering.
