atw: Re: I'm going into a documentation management role
- From: Stuart Burnfield <slb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Austechwriter <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:55:09 +0800 (WST)
Kate, the danger is that you spend an hour trying to make the template
comprehensive but bulletproof, plus an hour training the writers in its use,
then they spend an hour writing plus an hour trying to evade the template
restrictions and apply brute-force formatting, then you spend an hour fixing
the problems caused by this.
Instead the writers could spend their hour writing and then you would spend an
hour assembling the document in good techwriterly fashion, stripping out the
text from the raw source docs and discarding the mangled formatting.
Over time, you'll learn which writers are receptive to the idea of using
styles, and which ones will go their grave preferring to kick each and every
paragraph into its own unique position.
Within a few months you might find that you have, say, ten writers using your
template fairly happily and productively, and two writers still giving you
their lovingly hand-mangled documents to format and publish. But this is still
a very good result. No amount of training and template-refining will get those
last two writers to do as tidy and robust a job with their document as you.
Good luck with the job!
Stuart
Terry said:
> I'm wondering why they are resisting having a technical writer
> if it seems there's enough work to keep one busy and it would
> free up the time of the non-writer authors, whose proficiencies
> I assume lie elsewhere. It would seem to be a much more logical
> and efficient route to having consistent documents.
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