Respecting Technical Writers

Technical Writers Deserve Respect – From Each Other

Technical writers are made up of complex individual personae. As a writer, you are expected to have knowledge of your subject. The more subjects you write about, the more knowledge you gain. (Supposedly.) Not every writer is like that, but most are, and they deserve to be congratulated for going the extra mile and actually learning a product they are going to write about. Most writers maintain knowledge about many systems and subjects, thus becoming an "expert" in the technical writing field.

There’s more to Writing than just Knowing How Something Works

So, as a Technical Writer, you know a lot of stuff. So you were around when all you had to document were mainframe programs and used SCRIPT. So, you have an English degree. So, you know how to dissect a sentence and name every part and participle. Singularly, each of those accomplishments is a wonderful thing. However, there is so much more to being a technical writer than just visible “technical skills.”

A fellow technical writers said it best: "..there are many other things that tech writers do that are much more deserving of respect - organizing a doc set, researching methods for effective communication, mastering authoring and publishing tools, researching and organizing product information from a number of disconnected sources, understanding the product and its overall application more than most other departments in the company etc. etc."

A good technical writer isn’t just a writer. They are a project manager, documentation specialist, researcher, communicator, mediator, and so much more. Good technical writers identify that within each other and recognize the effort.

Not Everyone Recognizes the Effort

In all the professions, I don't think I've seen it more evident than in tech writing: When one writer follows another on a project, the previous writer's work receives scathing editorial comments from the new writer.

A technical writer deserves so much respect, not just from managers and programmers and SME's and support personnel, but from other technical writers. We forget that we are a very rare breed. Be fair to the previous technical writer. You don’t know all of the circumstances that led to the writer leaving the contract or project. Even if the writing is atrocious or the organization and layout lack creativity, try to be objective. Gather the necessary materials and add your expertise to the project without tearing the previous writer down to make yourself look better.

"Man's greatest desire is not love or hate, but to change another person's writing." -- George Orwell.

Sure, there are bad technical writers just like there are bad managers and bad