The biggest commercialization happened when the computer became widely available for business use in the ’70s. The second most revolu- tionary development happened when it became widely available to con- sumers in the ’80s—industry needed to sell its genius to us, the public.
When the microcomputer (the forerunner of personal computers) first appeared, it was a very mysterious thing indeed. If your computer could not successfully process information, it displayed a number, which corresponded to an error message. You could look the message up in a book, but you’d be lucky to understand what you found. Then computer programmers started writing messages in English—messages like “SOURCE IS READER” and warnings like “BDOS ERR ON A: SELECT.” These messages were understandable only to programmers.
Office automation and the commercial availability of personal com- puters put pressure on industry to produce larger quantities of documen- tation. And the audience had changed. Technical people, and those selling their creations, came to realize they needed to explain technology to the nontechnical public—the “end user”—and they needed someone other than a computer programmer to make their documents understandable.
Enter the professional technical writer—someone who knows how to use language and graphics to teach technical concepts to nontechnical people. When the computer industry began to expand, or rather explode, the demand for professional technical writers also exploded.
Today, technical writing has evolved into technical communication. Writers in all fields now have access to sight-and-sound media. Some-
times writers design computer tutorials for end users who will never pick up a document. Their computer teaches them, through graphics and sound, all they need to know about how to use it. Computer technology today allows you to record, store, and send voice messages inside docu- ments; to compose music; to manipulate full-color, three-dimensional objects in space; and more. Technical writers both describe these products and use them to communicate technical information.
So you can see the technical communicator’s role is changing as tech- nology changes, and has already evolved well beyond the role of writer. The field continues to evolve and grow rapidly.
In 1991 over 100,000 technical communicators were employed in the United States alone. This number is estimated to increase to 166,000 by the year 2009.* With the proliferation of multimedia and data commu- nications technologies, discoveries in biotechnology, new microprocessor- based devices, and other technological products, an unimaginable number of new opportunities will become available to technical writers in the next decade.
SUMMING IT UP
In this chapter, I delved into the history of tech writing and found that it is very old. I talked about the relatively recent birth of technical writing as a profession and its flight from the printed page into realms of color and sound. The next chapter describes people who do well in this field and the kinds of skills required.
* The Society for Technical Communication’s 1991–1995 Strategic Plan estimated the num- ber of technical communicators in the United States in 1991 to be more than 100,000. In the ensuing 10 years, STC membership grew 31 percent. If this growth rate reflects the continued growth of the profession, about 166,000 technical communicators will be working in the United States by the year 2009.
1A. G. Drachmann, The Mechanical Technology of Greek and Roman Antiquity: A Study
of the Literary Sources (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), p. 56.
2Evald Rink, Technical Americana: A Checklist of Technical Publications Printed Before
1831 (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus International Publications, 1981), p. 18.
3Sir T. Clifford Allbutt, Notes on the Composition of Scientific Papers (London: Macmillan
and Co., 1923), p. v.
4Allbutt, p. 140.
5Gerald J. Alred et al., Business and Technical Writing: An Annotated Bibliography of
Books, 1880–1980 (Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1981), p. 2.
6Robert Gunning, The Technique of Clear Writing (New York: McGraw-Hill Book
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3
Who Becomes
a Tech Writer?
W
ho are successful technical writers? What are their personal qualities and work-related skills? The reason you might ask these questions, of course, is to find out if you are such a person.Tech writers come from as varied educational backgrounds as you can imagine, from philosophy to computer science. The only background they seem to have in common is a degree of some sort, and even here, it’s tough to generalize.
A 1999 survey by the Society for Technical Communication (STC) found that 95 percent of its membership had a bachelor’s degree or higher.1This means that 5 percent did not. A 1999 WinWriters survey of
online help writers’ salaries shows some members without degrees were doing very well:
Individuals with a four-year degree coupled with heavy management responsibilities averaged $69,000 [in annual salary]. Those having a high school diploma coupled with 3–5 years of Web experience averaged $60,000.2
I recently spoke with two highly successful technical writing consul- tants who have no bachelor’s degrees. While they are exceptions, they also prove that if you don’t have a degree and you think this field is for you, you can still go for it. (Hiring managers I interviewed agree, but stip- ulate that a job applicant with no degree needs lots more experience in the field than an applicant with a degree.)
The profile of the tech writer is changing. Hiring managers are begin- ning to perceive technical communication degrees as more desirable now that such degrees are widely available. Nonetheless, the high demand for technical writers, coupled with their history of diversity, makes for fairly permissive hiring practices. By permissive, I mean that many different kinds of backgrounds are acceptable to hiring managers. (You can find more about that in the chapter “Breaking In.”) This chapter analyzes the
backgrounds, personalities, and skills of working writers today and gives you some ways to explore your own aptitudes.