Practical models for technical communication - Shannon Kelley 2021
Meet the professionals
Make technical communication work for you
The professional profiles collected in this chapter represent those who have bridged the gap between their education and their career. We sent out a survey to a variety of professionals who use different types of communication in their field. Note the common skill sets and the areas where flexibility comes into play.
Technical Communicator Profile
These are profiles of people working in fields where technical communication is a significant component of the job duties. Most did not major in writing or communications, but all use those skills in their fields.
Q & A with a Head of Products and Services
Q. How do you explain your job to someone outside your field?
A. [I] create and tell the story of our brand through useful products.
Q. What technical documents do you feel are relevant to educating a future professional in your field?
A. User story definition, acceptance criteria, Product Requirements Doc (PRD), Marketing Req Doc (MRD), Pitch Decks, term sheets, and machine-readable resumes.
Q. What do you wish you’d had access to as a student training for your profession?
A. A clue, some mentorship.
Q. What’s the biggest difference between academic writing and professional communication in your field?
A. Writing clear, thoughtful narratives are more important in tech writing than was previously taught. The documents of yesteryear (memos, spec docs) have disappeared.
Q & A with a Designer
Q. How do you explain your job to someone outside your field?
A. [I] design underground storm and sanitary sewers.
Q. What technical documents do you feel are relevant to educating a future professional in your field?
A. The Engineers Joint Contract Documents Committee (EJCDC) Contract Documents. Understanding the front-end documents to my project and the contract itself is extremely important to understand construction and the responsibility in construction.
Q. What do you wish you’d had access to as a student training for your profession?
A. Construction Document Technologies (CDT). I have recently completed this and it would have been beneficial in college.
Q. What’s the biggest difference between academic writing and professional communication in your field?
A. In college, it was stressed to keep it to the point and technical. I have found that as a professional, you have to adjust your writing to your audience. I have to explain items differently to a homeowner than I do a colleague. They only really teach the technical, but I have found that explaining in everyday terms is just as important.
Technical Writer Profile
These profiles are people who have chosen to use their writing skills as technical writers. Most majored in related fields like English, media, or communications.
Q & A with a Principal Technical Writer
Q. How do you explain your job to someone outside your field?
A. [I] write documentation (instruction manuals) for how to use my company’s software with multiple audiences in mind.
Q. What technical documents do you feel are relevant to educating a future professional in your field?
A. There’s so many! The Product Is Docs [a book by the Splunk documentation team], the Write the Docs Slack [an online network of professionals], and Every Page Is Page One [a book by Mark Baker] for starters.
Q. What do you wish you’d had access to as a student training for your profession?
A. Honestly, I wish I’d had a mentor. I probably would have jumped from support into writing sooner.
Q. What’s the biggest difference between academic writing and professional communication in your field?
A. Having an actual editor, plus the pressure of knowing that if I mess something up, I could partially be responsible for causing a customer issue.
Q & A with a Technical Writing Instructor and Technical Writer
Q. How do you explain your job to someone outside your field?
A. Technical writing is clearly explaining literal information in a way that makes it perfectly understandable and usable to its intended audience.
Q. What technical documents do you feel are relevant to educating a future professional in your field?
A. Procedures, emails, functional descriptions, technical illustrations, specifications (both “what it is” and “how it should work”), troubleshooting trees, quick reference cards, formal reports, and articles.
Q. What do you wish you’d had access to as a student training for your profession?
A. An instructor who had actually done the job! Great examples of good work and explanations of how bad work specifically didn’t measure up. Knowledge of word processor features like outlining, automatic table of contents, document element styles (e.g., XML tags) vs. formatting, and a really good peer reviewer.
Q. What’s the biggest difference between academic writing and professional communication in your field?
A. There should be none, but academic writing tends to be ego-driven in tone: more words, more syllables, longer and more cumbersome sentences, incomprehensible vocabulary, and gibberish titles seem to be the rule. Also, academic work has a much higher emphasis on citing all sources both in text and in a bibliography; technical work may give an acknowledgment somewhere or do nothing at all.
Unexpected Technical Communicators
These are profiles from others who use technical communication in unexpected ways.
Q & A with a Real Estate Broker
Q. How do you explain your job to someone outside your field?
A. I help people buy and sell homes.
Q. What technical documents do you feel are relevant to educating a future professional in your field?
A. The online courses for obtaining a license and for continuing education are horribly written. I think they were written by an attorney—very confusing language.
Q. What do you wish you’d had access to as a student training for your profession?
A. Maybe more real-world accounts of experiences/scenarios as part of the [real estate] curriculum, written by actual agents (or writers), not attorneys. The material is so dry and hard to get through.
Q. What’s the biggest difference between academic writing and professional communication in your field?
A. [Real estate] is a people-based one with plenty of face-to-face time and phone interaction, as opposed to academic documents.
Q & A with a Finance Manager
Q. How do you explain your job to someone outside your field?
A. I take care of financing vehicles for a dealership.
Q. What technical documents do you feel are relevant to educating a future professional in your field?
A. Excel [spreadsheets].
Q. What’s the biggest difference between academic writing and professional communication in your field?
A. My professional communication is much shorter in comparison to academic writing.