…Enter the “Documentation Specialist”. Now we’re getting somewhere. Now we can finally call’em like we see ‘em. Bob asks Sally to stop turning in her hang orders without filling oput the proper variables. Sally tells Bob it’s redundant because the spec form has the same information. Then the Customer Service Manager finds in the suggestion box yet another request tochange the forms. On and on and on.

 In the middle of it all, the technical writer hasd come to save the day. Find out where it went wrong…, or print the full story.

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Many Subject Matter Experts, or SME’s, do not know how valuable they are. Often, they just “do”, while others see them as elite intellects. (We cannot say geek here).

 Getting an SME to patiently explain “how” and “why” is an art. That’s where a competent interviewer comes in. An SME is often overloaded. Sometimes cooperation means only that some interviewer has just given them a new job description. It wasn’t on their plate yesterday, and now they have to do this too.

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Well written technical communcations are often surprisingly simple. True, the audience may be quite sophisticated, but the goal remains the same for all documentation: SERVE the reader’s needs.

Left to their own devices, a manual user will find what they need, if the manual is clearly organized for reference. A work instruction must generally be a precision document, anticipating….full text.  Or to download…..

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