Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Good technical writers in high demand

Young people, consider a career as a technical writer. It pays well (though not as well as engineers or doctors), offers solid work and good promotional tracks, and because your work is much needed, you'll have steady employment opportunities your whole career. When you retire, you can still do it part-time or independently, and if you're good at it, it can be very satisfying.

Why are tech writers so needed? Consider that just about every product or service made and offered for sale must offer clear instructions/information/labels/warnings perhaps to the buyer/consumer on the nature of the product or service, its description, its features, how to put it together and take it apart, how to operate it, maintain it, service it or replace parts of it, etc. All of this information must usually be written and read.

But the people who design, manufacture, and sell the product often don't have a very good skill at communicating about the product to other people. So they hire technical writers to write the user manuals and instructions clearly.

What happens when poor or confusing instructions go out with the product? Their phone lines and emails get clogged with befuddled consumers seeking clarification and assistance, and that costs the company much more to staff and maintain than the good tech writer's compensation.

But why can't anyone write good instructions? It's in the way the person thinks. Engineers think in highly technical and precise ways, often quantitatively. They may do that naturally or by training and experience. But it's not natural for them to try to speak to the end user of their designs and systems directly in unambiguous, "layman's" terms the user is apt to understand clearly. Executives and sales personnel think in qualitative as well as quantitative terms, and again seldom understand the engineering/manufacturing complexities of their products. They are concerned with results and bottom lines, markets and features of products that work as intended, not with the inner workings of such products.

But technical writing is mainly concerned with bridging the gap between those with specialized knowledge of the product or service and consumers. Technical writers, ironically, usually don't need technical knowledge. But they do need curiosity and the ability to learn from the engineers and marketing people those things which the consumer needs to know. Above all they need to know how to ask the right questions and couch the answers in plain language.

I taught both technical writing and creative writing at a technical university, and I well remember the main difference I had to try to stress between the two: creative writing tries to suggest many meanings, connote rich associations, offer more than one interpretation; technical writing tries to eliminate all meanings except one. One clear, exact, singular meaning is what the technical writer hopes to convey to each reader, with no other interpretation possible, in every statement, every instruction.

With the society becoming more and more dependent upon sophisticated technology and communications, the future is bound to be bright for a good technical writer.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe I should consider that job!

Carol Anne said...

Ah, yes, when I'm teaching my students how to write instructions, I also give an example of how NOT to write them -- what I call the "Instructions from Hell."

Ironically, these instructions were written in America, by Americans, not someplace in Asia where the writer might be forgiven for not knowing English very well -- they were the section in the owner's manual for a 1997 Ford Explorer purporting to explain how to change a tire.

We had Firestone tires, and one blew out toward the beginning of our Labor Day weekend a few years back, fortunately just after we got off the freeway and not while we were traveling at 80 mph, or the story might have ended very differently.

The instructions baffled two college educated adults (one technical writer/editor, one college English instructor), a Triple-A wrecker driver, and a gifted 9-year-old. For instructions to be so poorly written as to stymie two language experts and also an automotive expert is quite an accomplishment.

About a month after this incident, Ford issued a "recall correction" -- we received in the mail a plastic placard with instructions for changing a tire, very clearly illustrated and explained.

Pat said...

Shhh! You're blowing the secret of my gig! Of course, sometimes it seems to be news to me that manufacturers are hiring tech writers to explain their products; too often they fail to hire a professional to write instructions clearly, with purchasers getting stuck with a mystery (optionally wrapped in an enigma and tied up in a puzzle).

Also, your readers should know that technical writers don't just write instructions or manuals. They often coordinate technical projects, especially the entire flow of information that's needed to keep a complex effort on track.

Sometimes technical writers will even comment when a blogger makes a post with three et ceteras in a row.

nbk said...

Drat! I should be more careful. Thanks.