Technical Writers: Can you justify your job?

Technical writers are in the profession of disseminating the technical knowledge in structured format for the consumption of the user, which is aimed to realize a specific task or use. The present situation is, where the industry is filled with the technical writers who come from different backgrounds. Most of the technical writers are engineers, some of them have taken the technical writing course and some of them have made transition into this field from direct mass communication and journalism. The document produced by these technical writers has mixed quality as good, bad and ugly. However, most often the complaint received from the customer is that the documents are not user friendly.

If analyzed, most of the time the language is not very appropriate, clear and grammatically correct to explain the features and functionality. Some times the information presented does not have flow; sometimes many of the information are missing from the document. In nutshell we have not grown to a level to claim ourselves expert in the field of technical writing. One can say that this field is still in the nascent stage in India. Largely true, because our curriculum does not include this subject and we do not intend to take it as a career. Most of the people today who opt for writing career become journalists and join media related jobs.

The apathy is that most of the people who are today’s technical writers are not from the writing background, nor do they have inclination towards writing. It’s sheer job opportunity, which has drawn them to accept the job. Many of them working after a brief period have made a decision to shift to other fields and remaining are carrying on the task to continue their job. It’s quite ridiculing that the job what you do everyday is the job you do not like to do but you are bound to do because you are paid for that. Or, the job what you do is not your cup of tea. All these factors add to the immature technical writing produced by some of the unskilled technical writers, which brings bad name to the community.

The job what you hold today, is not just the job what you can hold because of the fact that you can write little bit of English. If you do not love your job then in fact it will not take you anywhere. You first be writer before you become a technical writer. As a matter of fact, you have to be first a writer to be a medical writer, political writer, and technical writer or fiction writer. If the writer is missing in you then nothing else can help you to become technical writer. Therefore, not only writing, but good quality writing is desired to be in this profession.

Can transition add value?

For many of the aspiring creative writer working as a technical writer might seem a good option because it is going to be paid well. If you are transitioning from your current non-writing position to technical writing because it's a hot market, you like technology, and/or you want to do away with your freelance tag, perhaps you are thinking right. But in case you just like writing, then you should think before you step in.

Writing and editing user manuals, help documents, technical bulletin and API document could be painful if you don’t love doing so. Technical writing is demanding and you will be tried writing different sort of technical stuff, which might not satisfy your liking for writing what you are looking for. So, before deciding to choose a career into technical writing, you must evaluate yourself.

Some would prefer to go for highly satisfying writing career of their liking even if it pays them less. Some would love to write about technology and enjoy doing so. Some would find technical writing as boring and unimaginative. Some would find technical writing as very interesting and creative, as it relates to problem solving and that requires lot of creativity. Follow your instinct to know where you fall among these categories.

What the technical writers meet and seminars stress upon?

Added to that the seminar and meet organized for the technical writers stresses upon learning different kinds of authoring and word processing tools, which is any way technical writers have to know to perform the task. I don’t know if any of the meet stresses to shape good language in spite of knowing that most of the technical writers come from non-writing background and that is going to be the bottleneck problem as they grow in their career. It is assumed that technical writers are basically the writers who has all the language ingredient in them to produced good writing and it’s the technical knowledge what they lack. Fundamentally, the assumption is right in the sense that you know what is expected out of you in terms of job and aim of the meet is to update you with new knowledge of the industry. Otherwise also, it’s the personal responsibility of the person to shape up their language skill who opts for this career.

Promise of global business

The reflection of good writing can be a visual part in any form, be it script, an article, an essay, an advertisement or a user manual. Especially user manual is supposed to be a first date with the product. Great manuals can sell products. There are good tutorials, which can make you understand the product so well that time and again you would love to continue with the same products.

But still there will be people who would still persist in search of your inner beauty. However, this is not the way to bet. Microsoft has consistently been trying to address everyone’s questions to make it competitive and have advantages. Still they may have messages. Above all to write the good manual you need to have good writers. And if you don’t have good writers your documents will not serve the purpose to the user. Bad documentation increases the cost of technical support and earns you even bad reputation in the industry.

Can we rise to the occasion and face the reality?

The best technical communicator is a technical person, is a subjective issue to argue. However, technical writers are the writers who have the rare ability to communicate and teach through indirect means such as paper and online media.

But it is very difficult to merely narrate a profession, which is entirely dependant on the personal caliber of a person. It is really a tough question to ask who can make a good technical writer. Many good writers who are able to write good story, poetry and fiction have many a times proved to be good technical writers as well and at a time bad writer too. Its all dependant on the personal interest what you could make of yourself

Possible solution?

Probably possible solution to stabilize this field in today’s context would be to hire really good writers so that they can justify their presence in the job. For the technical writers also, it would be apt to get out of the tag of half-writer, pseudo writer or be in dual job capacity being a writer and someone else too. If this field is to sustain well in India, the quality of writing has to be improved immensely to meet the challenge.

Technical Writing: Is the opportunity worth taking?

Technical writing is the art and science of producing document, which describes the technical information about the features of the product and its functionality. It is an art, because it involves the articulate use of language for communicating the information. It is a science because the presentation of the information is based on the styles, template, grammar, consistent terminology, clarity, concision, factual accuracy, information mapping, layout and design, proofreading, subject matter-expert reviews, document validation, resource scheduling, and deadline relative to product-release dates. Technical writing is not the recent development of the industry; it was present in the form of documentation in different form.

However, in recent years the importance of information communication have been felt paramount and documenting the technical information has not only become the part of communication but also the storage of knowledge for future reference and use. Technical writing and technical writers were the part of the information industry in the west from long time whereas in India its presence can be traced around two decades back. This is due to the emergence of software and hardware industry. But the real requirement of technical writing and technical writers are felt necessary for past five years, when India became a hot IT destination because of cost cutting factor and available talent pool. Almost all the product company required technical writers to document the product information in a legible manner, which can educate the user to use the product effectively. The emergence of India as global IT destination opened up a new job avenue for the people as technical writers.

Scenario

Although it does not matter which industry you're considering for a career, it probably employs technical writers. Technical writers work in computer science, medicine, environmental studies, electronics, government, cinema, the aerospace industry, and just about any field in which people must interpret and use technology. They are an indispensable part of today's technology world. Presently more than seventy percent of the technical writers are working for the Information technology Industry. Out of them, majority belongs to the western countries. India has very little share in terms of percentage of total technical writers in the IT industry.

According to some sources quoted frequently in the news, around 5000 Indian technical writers are engaged in technical writing, mostly with software industry. This includes the writers working for product information communication, pre-sales documentation and training documentation. Though this figure, according to some industry expert seems to be bit higher side. However, the demand for the technical writers is noticed ever increasing in India, but there is a dearth of people with right skills.

Indian IT industry is really finding it tough to get the technical writers from the market. Industry also can not overlook this part because this is the mandate of the industry to deliver or release the product to the customer along with the technical information in documented form. Without the product documentation the product delivery is incomplete.

What is the proposition?

The present situation where American way of looking at technical writers is being followed: every software company is looking for engineers to be the technical writers. The job is first offered to the engineers who want to make a career in technical writing and if the engineers are not available, only then the focus is turned on to other suitable incumbent. However, in software industry, most often the question is being asked, “Can engineers write well?”. Yet, they are preferred over others. The idea might be that engineers can understand technology better than the other lots. Then, what if they are not able to communicate well? In fact this might not be a generic problem. The question is now haunted for the hiring department, whom to rely on: a good writer without engineering background or an engineer without good writing skill. Software industry also truly believes in re-engineering the product and even resources. However, the belief of re-engineering an engineer into a good writer is a difficult task at hand and in some cases a utopian dream.

“Technology can be taught and learnt in a year or two, but learning a good language is the fruit of years learning process and that can not be given in a packet form” --quotes an industry expert. This holds true to the case that most of our institution emphasize on imparting technological education whereas they ignore the fact that without good communication the impact of technology can not be realized. This is indeed going to cause talent deficiency and industry might get the brunt of this sooner or later. There are some good trends coming up where some software company is weighing options to utilize services of good writers who have adaptation of learning new technology faster and translate them effectively into precise writing.

What is the job?

The job is where you do the same thing over and again. If this is your palate, technical writing may be the field for you. If you like the challenge of writing for an audience, technical writing offers you the chance to make money while just doing that. Technical writers work in a challenging, and exciting field which tests their ability to adapt to new situations and learn new skills. People who enjoy learning new things will find technical communication a stimulating career. Technical writers take knowledge from engineers, scientists, doctors and other experts and render it into forms that lay people can understand. To do this, they must have the willingness to continually learn about new subject matter. And they must know how best to present information to different audiences from technically trained people to the general public

The take on

Do you want to be a technical writer and write for the different audiences? Hold on! There is no sort cuts. The job will ask you to have few skills in you and some of them you can learn at work place as a part of the training. First and foremost is good writing skills in English and presentation skills of the information in the best-possible way. Primary knowledge of word processing tool like MS Word is required without saying. However, the company with whom you want to begin your career also teaches you the use of some of the other authoring, publishing and web help tools.

There are some of the training institutes, which provide short-term training on technical writing and placement too. There is no academic program being offered as of now in our educational system where you can be a qualified technical writer. The only opportunity you can have is to become a trained technical writer, that too with training or on job. This is a new opportunity in India and having career in this field is industry dependent and the future of this career can be well aligned with future of the industry.