1. Description of the target reader.
2. General description of the document.
3. List of topics/subtopics in outline form if at all possible.
Offer to interview them to get them started. And/or if you need to, interview them to create this outline (that is, if you are not sure what the document should be like, interview them to get an understanding from them about what they think needs to be written.)
In my experience, engineers usually intend to write helpful documentation, but due to time constraints, motivation or lack thereof, and innate pedagogical talent, their ability to write useful stuff varies widely. I would try to provide people with a structure, praise hugely for any results at all, be grateful for the good stuff, try to make the not-so-good stuff better and run it back past the authors for review in a non-judgmental way so they can see the changes you had to make.
Getting engineers to help write documentation is likely to get you more accurate documentation, but it will take time on your and on their parts. Usually, for me, it does not save me time, so much as ensures the content is correct and correctly targeted for readers.
Have fun.
- Emily
At 07:26 AM 10/7/2013, you wrote:
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Hi,
A few mechanical engineers have been asked, as part of their varied workload, to author certain documents in English (How To, Webinars, software essentials) in the near future.
Working with authors who are not formally trained is a new experience for me. I am wondering how to best define their tasks and the tasks of my technical writing group who will work together to ensure quality documents. For example:
· I could provide the engineers with templates in FrameMaker and an introduction to the basics of technical writing and English grammar and bring them to write good documents over time. Some formal training in technical writing could be offered. The technical writers would then review the final documents (container and content) to ensure the overall quality of the documents.
· Or, maybe the role of the engineers should be to write rough content within guidelines (get the ideas and workflows on paper), and my team of technical writers could be responsible for formatting the content and expressing their ideas/workflows correctly in English. This would take much less time for the engineer (less of a learning curve).
Do you have some experience in this matter? Any hints for what may work best?
Many thanks.
Here in Quebec City, Canada autumn is in full color. Mother Nature at her very best.
Stephen O'BRIEN
Coordonnateur à la documentation et rédacteur technique senior | Documentation Coordinator and Senior Technical Writer
InnovMetric Logiciels | Software
sobr...@innovmetric.com
T (1) 418.688.2061
F (1) 418.688.3001
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