Last year the word was “paradigm.”
Everything seemed to be an old paradigm, a new paradigm or a shifting paradigm.
This year’s word seems to be “technical.”
“Technical” has been reborn, from the nerdish definition of “abstract or theoretical” to the far more sexy connotation of “cutting-edge, requiring cutting-edge skills.”
A trendy mountain biker might refer to a particularly hard trail as “technical”-meaning it takes high-level skills to negotiate. A scuba diver might refer to “technical,” as opposed to “sport,” diving-meaning diving that requires advanced skills and equipment. And in the newly anointed cyberpunk world-after all, cyberpunk rated a Time magazine cover-anything tech is, by definition, cool.
The most recent beneficiary of the renovated “technical” has been the previously lowly technical writer, who has been reborn as the “technical communicator.”
“Technical communicators bridge the gap between the creators and users of technology,” according to the recently formed Society for Technical Communication, based in Arlington, Va. “For example, technical communicators write and illustrate the instructions for assembling your gas grill. They produce manuals for operating computer software programs, instructions for assembling and installing products and guidelines for maintaining equipment.”
According to the society, the technical communicator is a hidden professional, stripped of the bylines and author profiles that accrue to more consumer-publication-oriented writers.
” `Technical communication’ is an umbrella phrase that covers technical writing, illustrating and editing,” said Walter Bacak, the society’s assistant executive director.
“Today, with the popularity of desktop publishing, there’s no longer any clear line of demarcation among these fields. One person does it all, so we call it technical communication.”
To be sure, technical writers always have been around-many of the writers in this section, including this one, have had stints as technical writers. A large corporation such as International Business Machines Corp. might have such people on staff, while a smaller company might hire free-lance outside contractors.
“Technical communicators came into demand after World War II as the workplace became more mechanized and more consumer-electronics products were developed,” Bacak said. “Technical communicators are employed in just about every field, from fast food to pharmaceuticals. Besides product manuals, technical communicators produce policy-and-procedure manuals, employee handbooks and the like.”
These hidden communicators usually are in their late 30s, according to the society, have worked in the computer industry for about seven years, have degrees in English or technical communication from a four-year college and are paid around $37,000 a year. They are happy with their jobs and think their employers are placing more and more emphasis on communicating with the outside world.
There are an estimated 100,000 people in the profession in the U.S. and Canada, and the society expects that number to increase by 50 percent in three to five years.
That said, let’s get back to that gas grill-because the only written instructions this writer has found more obtuse than the average software manual was the assembly booklet for my gas grill. With all these professionals out there, how come most manuals still appear to be written largely in Sanskrit, as filtered through the Marx Brothers?
“Part of that perception comes from the type of material we produce,” Bacak said. “Technical communicators write a lot of things that people hate to read.
“In the past, technical communicators came from engineering backgrounds. Communications skills weren’t their forte. Today most technical communicators are liberal-arts majors. Companies are hiring excellent communicators with some aptitude for technology,” Bacak said.
“You don’t need to be an electronic genius to write a manual for a gas grill-in fact, it’s probably better if you’re not, because you’re better able to write in a language the average consumer understands.”
Society studies indicate that more than half the employers surveyed are placing more importance on technical communication-after a decade of being blasted for lousy manuals, that’s not surprising.
But in some world-class manufacturing companies, the pendulum is swinging the other way. Instead of going to a dedicated technical communicator, the responsibility for manuals, instructions and the like is reverting to the engineering team responsible for the product.
Nestled in the valley near Lake Tahoe, Bently Nevada is a manufacturer of very high-technology, vibration-sensing equipment that is one of the few American companies certified as a supplier for the Japanese giant Toshiba Inc. Bently used to employ 10 to 15 full-time technical communicators, but now the responsibility for manuals and other documentation is back on the product team-and chief executive Roger Harker calls that a step forward.
“Sometimes the product documentation read like a Chinese manual translated into English. That’s less of a problem now,” Harker said. However, Bently now requires that its engineers communicate in English, the language of the company’s end users.
No matter who does the work, said Don Rice, an independent consultant in Atlanta, “the important thing is that the companies I’m working with have realized that good documentation is a marketing tool, not an afterthought.”
