Technical Writer

We are in the process of moving our fiction-related writing over to our pen name site, http://www.rowandai.com/.  At the moment it sits as a separate WordPress blog under our work site (http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/). 

We had a long discussion about how we might do it.

Did we want to do as we had done with Infinite Diversity, where we had some base HTML pages and just linked separate blogs beneath it?  Or did we want to base the whole thing around a WordPress blog so that managed all our content from the one place?  Because that’s what WordPress is, a content management system (CMS).

I know that some users of high-end CMS’s may dispute this definition, as a high-end CMS does a lot more.  But what is a content management system really?  It is content, stored in some kind of database, accessed via a front end.  That is exactly what WordPress is.

Not only that it’s free, well supported, and easy to use.

The problem with WordPress is that it’s a blog.  It looks like a blog, and while we want to include a blog, we want the whole thing to look like a web site, not a blog.

We want our blog to blend in with the site, so if we decided to go the HTML top level with WordPress sitting beneath it route we would have two sets of style sheets—exactly the same—to manage.  Not to mention two different ways of inputting the data.

We would have to customise the layout extensively if we used it.  Neither of us know PHP, but we’re both okay with HTML and CSS.  I think we can manage the PHP component, with a little help from W3Schools and the WordPress documentation.

We decided on the single solution.  A standalone WordPress website, with customised pages to look like a blog.

Because, let’s face it, if you can get around the design issues, WordPress has to be one of the best, cheapest content management systems around.

You know the scenario.  You pick up a user manual or other piece of text and start reading, and a misspelt word jumps out at you.  It’s so obvious you wonder how the editor or writer possibly missed it.

It’s a lot different when you are doing the proofing.

It is hard to edit work you are close to

There are two types of closeness:

• Close to the writing (meaning you wrote it), and
• Close to the time of writing (meaning you just finished writing it).

It is always difficult to proof something you wrote yourself.  You know what it is supposed to say, and sometimes you read what you expect to read, not what is actually on the page.

Time gives you perspective.  The more time you can manage—within reason—between the initial writing and the proofreading, the more dispassionate your review will be. 

Better still, if you wrote it, get someone else to review it.

The closer to deadline you finish, the more likely you are to make mistakes

Sometimes time constraints make it impossible, but you should always try to make time for editing if you can.  A lot of errors happen because there is little or no proofing, due to the writer running out of time.

Sloppy editing

Given the choice, most of us would rather write new documentation than rewrite things we have already written.

Some people write one draft and think their document is finished.

Let me tell you, it isn’t.

It’s a rare piece of writing that comes out perfect from the first draft.  No matter how good you think that draft is, put it away for a few days and then read it again.  You will be surprised at how much you change.

No matter how hard you try, mistakes still slip through.  The important thing is to ensure they are minimal.  One error in a document is undesirable, but not the end of the world.  Or in general, it’s not, unless it’s something major like leaving leaving out a “not” in “do not press”, for example.

Someone reading your documentation may notice one typo and forgive you, but if you have three or four, they’re likely to then decide that you are sloppy, and treat the information as if it was sloppy too.

It’s an old saying that those who can, do, while those who can’t, teach.

Teaching adults—whether it be at a tertiary institute or in the workplace—is different to teaching children.  Children are fed information, and the teacher checks to ensure that they have retained that information by homework, assignments and the like.  If the child has not learned what they need to know, the teacher takes remedial action to ensure they do learn.

It is different when that child goes on to tertiary studies, or when they learn at the workplace.

My writing partner recently started a professional writing degree at one of our local tertiary institutions.  She commented how the younger students straight from secondary school waited to be told what to do and how to do it, while the older ones took the initiative and did their own thing.

At the same time I was running training sessions at work, and we spent some time discussing the different teaching methods of a tertiary lecturer and the workplace trainer.

We decided that while there are some brilliant teachers out there, it’s actually more common to have poor teachers in tertiary education than it is to have them in the workforce.  In fact, many university lecturers would soon find themselves out of a job if they changed careers and became workplace trainers.

Why is that?

Note that I am talking about people who make a career out of training here, not the subject matter expert who is suddenly thrust into a training role with, “You know how to do this, show everyone else.”

First, though, let me define what I mean by a ‘bad’ teacher.  I mean someone who cannot impart information to others.  You may know a subject backwards, but if you cannot pass that knowledge on you are not a good teacher.

In the workplace the onus is on the trainer to produce a result—a trainee who knows how to carry out a specific task.  This is measurable.  If the trainee goes back to work and can carry out their task, then the trainer has done their job.  If large numbers of trainees come back from training still unable to carry out the task, the trainer is sacked.  Hence, in general, only the good (i.e. successful) trainers survive.

In the tertiary environment the onus is on the student to produce the result.  The student must prove that they have learned by passing exams or other set tasks. The lecturer passes on information but it is up to the student to retain it.

It’s not that university lecturers are necessarily bad teachers, nor do bad teachers teachers automatically gravitate to higher education. Like any other profession—including workplace training—they have their range of good, bad and occasionally brilliant teachers.  What they don’t have is a results-oriented workplace that reflects back on them, rather than the student, if the student does poorly.