I’ll happily admit I have a lower tolerance for lengthy discussions on the infinite variations of grammar rules. I will listen to most arguments for a while, but once I have enough information to make a decision based on them then after that, TO ME, it’s noise. I am not saying that the discussion from that point onwards is invalid, just that, with a business focus, I am no longer gaining ROI.

As for the ‘not bother to write as well as we possibly can’.. well that’s almost insulting! I think most professionals continue to try and improve EVERY skill they own, constantly. I continue to learn but try and balance (again like most professionals) which skills I need to ‘buff up’. I guess at present I’m reasonably happy with my writing skills and I’m more focussed on technical skills, ohh and as I can only ever talk about my own reactions to things, I do not know how you, or anyone else thinks.. .why did you presume otherwise? ;-)

So let me try and rephrase this discussion.

You are a hiring TechPubs manager.

You interview and narrow down the candidates for a new Technical Author position. You have two candidates. From talking to them, see samples of their work, and so on.. you ascertain that one is slightly less experienced when it comes to dealing with heavily technical information (in software land, think APIs), whilst the other has done a lot of work with that level of technology but some of his writing samples, whilst readable and generally ‘OK’, point to the fact he/she may need some coaching to improve the quality of their writing.

Who do you hire?

And yes, that’s all the context you need as your answer depends on YOUR current role and industry sector, right? So if I am hiring for a software company I may veer towards the more technically able candidate. If I am hiring for, say, someone to write a help system for an online book store, I may veer towards the other candidate. Horses for courses as they say.

A final question: If I change the title of this post, and the closing line, and blur the lines a little inbetween, would you agree with ANY of this?

As I’ve said before, no technical author does ONE thing perfectly as our jobs seem to spill over into so many other areas, be it typography, legalese, information design, illustrations, etc etc etc. So I guess I was deliberately trying to provoke to get some discussion going..

Worked, huh? ;-)

So maybe MY post boils down to “sometimes people just like to hear themselves talk” ? I’ll listen to those people for a while, they are usually pretty smart, but it’s not worth my time to keep on listening beyond a certain point.

I think the problem I continue to have with your message is that you seem to be extrapolating from your own reactions to making a generalized statement about the worth of the discussion. You seem to be saying that “a healthy level” or “a certain point” for you is the point at which the discussion becomes pedantic and useless for everyone.

[t]o offer an analogy, I know the highway code well enough to pass the driving test and to drive safely. I cannot quote the highway code though, does that make me a bad driver?

It doesn’t make you a bad driver but it does make you a bad police officer! This analogy means that you see yourself as the driver — someone who might be able to drive and sort of knows the rules — as opposed to the person responsible for being knowledgable about the rules and enforcing them.

I don’t buy the argument that because our readers are willing to accept a much lower level of concise and correct English that we should ourselves not bother to write as well as we possibly can, and understand why and how we are writing what we do. Just because you can slide by knowing just enough about the rules to manage not to smash into a post doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t learn more of the rules to make you a better driver and to serve as an information source to other drivers who look to you to provide the information about the rules (to strain the analogy to its breaking point :-> )

Without wanting to quote Strunk & White, I think we agree that every word must be justified, and yes, knowing the rules of grammar is a must-have for a technical writer.

But, to offer an analogy, I know the highway code well enough to pass the driving test and to drive safely. I cannot quote the highway code though, does that make me a bad driver? No. So I guess that middle ground is where we are all, I think, agreeing we should be. It’s the fringes that bother me, and somewhere out there is a point where knowledge becomes very expensive… ohh more on that thought later!

I’m not for a minute saying that you are either one or the other, ‘writer’ or ‘engineer’. But, again, I do think the industry (software where I have my experience) is leaning towards those who show tendencies for the latter. I think my main point is being lost though, and I’ll try and address that in another post.

I think you are confusing English with Literature. Masters Level English is still English and not literature. When you talk of pedantry it is about people who use words inappropriately. The words they use are misfits in the sentence and the prose sounds contrived because it is. That is incorrect usage, nothing to do with any kind of level.

Any writer (technical or otherwise) has to know how to write well-that is -write clearly using the most appropriate words. So the bias towards the technical accuracy of a document as opposed to the document being written well (that you seem to see in today’s writing) maybe imaginary. The ability to write clearly is an instrument that one uses to deliver the technical know-how. So I don’t see how the question of preferring one over the other arises. They are not comparable. Why should they be pitted against each other at all?

I think you are reading a little too far between the lines. I’m all for professionals discussing things which concern them but can you honestly say that sometimes those discussions don’t go a LITTLE too far?

I’d also suggest that there is a connection (one I’ve witnessed on numerous occasions) for those with a predominantly studied English background to write overly long ‘prose’. And yes, it is a bit of a leap of logic, I’ll admit to that, it was quite deliberate on my part.

As I said, there is a middle ground, and that middle ground is quite wide and I’m happy to move about within it, it’s when discussions pass the point of being useful to the majority that I stop reading (and I do). I have learned a LOT about my profession from the mailing list in question, and will continue to do so but, like ANY profession, there are times when the amount of energy spent on a topic passes a healthy level.

So maybe MY post boils down to “sometimes people just like to hear themselves talk” ? I’ll listen to those people for a while, they are usually pretty smart, but it’s not worth my time to keep on listening beyond a certain point.

And finally, not knowing or caring about something isn’t what I’m saying. I am a technical writer by trade, I take both words in my job title seriously and try and keep a good balance between them if I can. What I’m trying to suggest is that, recently and in my experience, that balance has been tipping more towards being “more technical” than to “Masters level English”.