There's also a heckuva lot more to editing than just a grammar check by a bunch of kids (or any grammar-checker, for that matter).
Rene Stephenson "Denise L. Moss-Fritch" <d.mossfritch at comcast.net> wrote: Good Day Mulholland, Sorry, in my opinion the plan is not in the best interest of the customers. There is far more to "writing documentation" than knowing the application being developed. Will the documentation be print (or Acrobat files), or online help? Each format has a different structure and requires a different form of authoring. While print (or Acrobat) form follows a book format of typically related information that includes transitions between paragraphs, sections, and chapters; online help follows a different (individual topic) format. Typically online help topics follow a pattern of overview, drilling down to specific topics that further explain, describe the interface and option, and offer specific procedures. However, such a process does not describe higher level processes that might include several options (dialogs or tabs). If you really must follow such a process because of costs (although typically tech writers are paid half of what developers earn), remember you will be taking development time from your staff. I would also recommend an initial development edit that would review the structure and basic types of content of your documentation. The second edit would focus upon language. Best, Denise L. Moss-Fritch -----Original Message----- From: framers-bounces+d.mossfritch=comcast....@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces+d.mossfritch=comcast.net at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of mulholland4 Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 12:55 PM To: framers at lists.frameusers.com Subject: radical revamping of techpubs Hi, I would like to see what the group thinks of this scenario for writing documentation within a company? 1. Remove all existing tech writing staff from techpubs. 2. Replace these with software developers and specialists who know the software inside out and get them to write all of the documentation. These would now be known as Developer-techwriters. (It should be noted that none of these people has English as a first language, despite this being the primary market for the documentation.) 3. Hire editing staff to edit only the language and grammar of the documents written by the software specialists. The reasoning behind this scenario is; that this saves money as the developers know the software, and it is really cheap to get university students to come in and edit. I won't make comments on this just now as i'm sure there are many of us who just want to run screaming! thanks Mulholland _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as d.mossfritch at comcast.net. Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/d.mossfritch%40comcast.n et Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as rinnie1 at yahoo.com. Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/rinnie1%40yahoo.com Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.