Ooo... Loook! 2 posts in one day!

So, for my Manuals class, we had to write an essay about what Technical writing is, and how the subgenre of manuals fits in it. I was feeling poetic and flippant, to a certain degree, and I wrote this:

The U.S. Department of Labor website says, “Technical writers develop technical materials, such as equipment manuals, appendixes, or operating and maintenance instructions. They also may assist in layout work.” Obviously, the Department of Labor needs a technical writer, if this is the best description they can come up with. CNNMoney calls technical writing the 13th best career in a list of 50 and gives similar descriptors as the Department of Labor. However, I see technical writing as much more than developing manuals. Manuals are an integral part of the career, as I will touch on later, but they are not the be-all, end-all of what technical writers do.

I prefer the definition given at last year’s STC conference here at Stout. During one of the presentations, Dan Riorden was talking about what it meant to be a technical writer. He said that it means being curious about the world around us. We are teachers. At the most basic level of this career, we are teachers. Perhaps that’s a romantic way of looking at it.

Or, perhaps that is the most realistic view of technical writing. All the technical writers I have met thus far have a thirst and drive for acquiring knowledge. They are passionate about language and even keener to share what they know. They are bright, inquisitive people who have discovered a life-long love affair with proper placement of semi-colons and hyphens. They can wax philosophical about the origins of words and the development of the English language.
I started out in Software Engineering, but when I found out who technical writers viewed the world (and the information in it), I realized that it was the field in which I belonged. I love to learn, and more than that, I love to help other people learn. This is where the genre of technical manuals comes in.

The ability to construct technical manuals is in most definitions of Technical Writing for a reason. When I tell people I could write manuals for a living, the most common response is, “Oh. That sounds boring.” They say this because few people sit down and read manuals for fun. They don’t touch them until they have to. However, they all have to. As our technology grows exponentially, there is no way to keep everyone educated in all the software and machines available. Thus, we have manuals.

The development of manuals is an extension of this teaching process. They are the medium in which we fadelessly interact with our students. Using manuals, we are the user’s advocate. We, as technical writers, work to ensure understanding. Each time someone picks up a manual, they are learning something new. They are being taught.

Technical writing and the creation of manuals is much more than simply making lists and dry instructions. It is the creation of text-books for the real world. It is the art of learning and teaching combined into one process.

Heh. I was feeling empassioned, I guess, when I wrote it. It might be a bit silly, but it's not graded, so I took some liberties with it.