Disturbing Relevance to My Work

[Phil Elmore]

As some of you know, I am a professional technical writer and have been for a decade. Among the industrial equipment about which I have written (on top of and under which I have climbed, behind which I have dodged to avoid forklifts, and around which I have hastened to take illustrative photos) are the machines that make and inspect glass bottles. I know far more about the making of glass bottles than is necessary for any human being to know.

You flashlight gearheads may be interested to know that one of the ways such bottles are inspected for defects is to strobe a bank of LEDs so a camera and computer can analyze the images that result. A bottle is analyzed for two different types of defects -- dimensional defects, which are flaws in the shape of the bottle, and sidewall defects, which are flaws in the glass itself (inclusions, "birdswings" of glass that stretch across the interior, etc.).

My lovely wife was taking a Snapple from the refrigerator the other day when she showed me the glass bottle. I got all excited. "Hey, this is a dimensional defect! This bottle should have been culled at the factory! It never should have made it through!"

How she does not think me insane I could not say, given that this type of behavior is not all that uncommon for me.

Dimensional defect in glass Snapple bottle

 

[Cruentus]

Hi Phil,

Since this is about your work, I was curious. How do you get into technical writing?

My wife is degreed, and does a lot of legal writing for her work, but has been interested in getting into technical writing. Some advice would be appreciated.

Paul

 

[arnisador]

My brother has a bachelor's in English and worked his way into a position at Xerox by working for a small contractor first, then as a direct hire. He used to write dry manuals, the did more training-oriented stuff, and worked his way up to supervising problem response teams and more. He's now the only English major with "engineer" in his job title!

 

[Phil Elmore]

Ironically, I have an Accounting degree. My first job out of college was for an environmental consulting firm, where I did some writing (that was like dumbed-down technical writing) and their accounts payable/accounts receivable. My technical background started when I was in college; on summers I used to do exploded view parts drawings in Autocad for my father's company. My dad has been a technical writer since 1987.

Eventually my father needed another writer; he contacted me and asked me if I would do it. He would train me, he said; he knew I had the aptitude. I said yes and I worked for him for a couple of years.

Suddenly I found myself with an Accounting degree and a resume loaded primarily with technical writing. While I don't have any English credentials, I've always been a good writer (my college Honors Thesis was a collection of short stories). The experience with my father's company got me started, and then I just kept going.

At this point I've been doing it for over ten years and I have a damned good resume, built entirely on work experience. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've had to tell this story to employers wanting to know why I have an Accounting degree.

I've written documentation for industrial glass making and glass inspecting equipment, photocopiers and binders, radar systems, mobile cranes, welders, all manner of instrumentation, and HVAC. I've done training programs for the building trades. I've done multimedia interactive presentations, instructional job descriptions for construction managers, and gigantic machinery that polishes video screens. I've stood in warehouses big enough to hold a jetliner, I've nearly been run over by forklifts about a dozen times, I've spent days on end behind safety glasses videotaping machinery in motion, and I've interviewed I don't want to know how many engineers.

A technical writer who operates in industrial environments is part detective, part diplomat, and part craftsman -- obtaining information from sometimes reluctant parties who don't get along with each other in order to mold that information and obtain or create illustrations to blend everything into a (hopefully) coherent whole. It sounds mind-numbingly boring, and it sometimes is, but ultimately it is the craft of writing that I love and this is more important than the subject matter.

On the job in the warehouse, safety glasses at hand.

Related Column: Brevity is the Soul of Lint

As for getting into technical writing, that is a good question. Relevant job experience is your best ticket in, but of course a degree never hurts. The Technical Writing class I took in college bore no resemblance to what I do on a daily basis. It is more important simply to be able to write competently. If you demonstrate that you're a decent editor, that can get your foot in the door, first as a proofer and then as an editor. It depends on the firm.

I'm a good editor but terrible at spotting problems in my own work; it's a blindspot that almost every writer shares. You see what you mean to write, not what you wrote.

 

[MA-Caver]

Just out of plain ole curiosity, that snapple bottle... I can see the defect obviously and probably would've still drank out of it if there were no cracks or breaks in it and maybe even kept the bottle for out of it's weirdness... for about two or three months then chucked it in the garbage where it belongs, but am at a loss as to why it would've been culled at the factory. It doesn't seem to me to be a hazard or anything, or is it just not the perfectly shaped bottle that it should've been. Would that have been the reason or is there another ... :idunno: just wondering.

 

[Phil Elmore]

When a bottle is inspected at the factory, it's evaluated for both dimensional and sidewall defects. This one's a dimensional defect, meaning that if the outline of the bottle doesn't conform to the parameters set in the inspection machine (for "lean," for example) it will be automatically rejected and the bottle kicked off to wherever culls go. Most glass bottles are, I would guess, less than perfectly shaped, but that's not visible to the naked eye. In this case, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the contents of the bottle (and the bottle itself is probably almost, if not just as, strong as any other bottle) -- it's just that this bottle is so obviously out of shape that I can't see how it slipped past the inspection process.

 

[Cruentus]

Thanks Phil (and Jeff).

I have a final few questions. One part I am confused about is how does one gain knowledge on the piece that you are documenting. Example: let's say that you are writing something on a piece of industrial glass equiptment. Yet, you know nothing about this piece of equiptment to start with. How do you go about researching the part? Would the company you work for customarily provide for that with resouces and time for research? Finally, when companies are looking for a writer, do they expect credentials where one would have some previous knowledge of the trade (so would an industrial glass company expect you to have familiarity with industrial glass before hiring you to write for them, for example)? Also, when you do technical writing, are you generally working for a firm that is subcontracted by outside companies, or are you in-house somewhere?

Also, what should one use for a writing sample (if asked for one) if one is trying to break into the field and has no experience as a technical writer (but has experience in writing in other mediums)?

I know that is a lot of questions, so sorry about that. I appreciate you taking the time to answer though. This is very helpful to me and my wife, as she is seriously considering getting out of the law firm and into writing for a living at some point.

Paul

 

[Phil Elmore]

Typically, when I was doing glass documentation, we would go to the factory and do a "survey," in which we would talk to the engineer(s) -- usually tape-recording the conversation to do a transcription later -- and sometimes take pictures and video. We would also collect blueprints and/or Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) files. Sometimes the engineers could provide notes and/or previous documentation that had been marked up; sometimes not. There were times when we had to do everything from scratch based on our conversations and interviews with the engineers and our observations of the equipment; sometimes we had plenty of notes and hardcopy materials from which to work.

Most companies understand that they must allow their engineers and subject matter experts time and resources so the writers can do their jobs. Many companies -- or portions of companies -- don't understand why documentation is important, or how to do it properly, so you do sometimes encounter resistance to the writer getting the job done. "My engineers can't waste time talking to you, they have work to do" is one departmental attitude I've encountered before. Other departments have actively involved me in their meetings, expecting regular status reports of all ongoing documentation. It is a pleasure to work with any company who understand the importance of GOOD documentation, because that makes my life a lot easier.

Writing a manual from scratch is exhausting in that early "survey" stage because you have to be absolutely mentally "on" the entire time. I hated that part, actually, and still do, simply because it is so taxing. You have to be keeping in mind during the conversation precisely what information you're getting, what information you don't have, questions that might come up later, pictures you'll need (keeping in mind that it is time- and cost-prohibitive to make another trip out and do all this over again -- you basically get one shot and no do-overs, depending on how far away the client is and how busy the engineers are). You have to have enough knowledge of what the manual must contain to know what to ask, too.

More abstractly, you must be technically competent enough to know what you do and do not know. You don't have to be an engineer -- you can defer to their judgment -- but you have to know at least enough about equipment and industry in general to be able to ask questions and get the information, and to know when you've not gotten a sufficient answer. It would be like the engineer saying, "This bank of LEDs strobes different depending on whether we're looking for sidewall or dimensional defects," and me going, "What's an LED?" This technical knowledge comes only with practice. I learned from my father on the job; he was an electrical engineer for years before he became a technical writer, and was simply fortunate and intelligent enough also to be a competent wordsmith.

I, by contrast, have never held an engineering degree, but I learn quickly, absorb abstract concepts easily, and mentally shelve what I don't need to know in order to get the job done, filing those specifics under "Engineer's Judgment" or "Subject Matter Expert's Opinion Needed." What I do have going for me is a very good grasp of the mechanics of writing. At this point, after ten years of doing this job, I have enough technical background across a diverse enough array of topics -- coupled with the field experience of dealing with engineering teams, getting information, writing and illlustrating manuals from scratch, working the diplomacy, etc. -- that I command a good salary and perform my job more than competently.

When companies go looking for writers, what they want will vary widely depending on what they prefer. Some expect writers to know as much as engineers, or to learn it -- that's the "old school" approach to technical writing. Others treat writers as glorified secretaries whose job it is to edit and make presentable information provided in total by the engineering staff (such writers are also paid accordingly -- that's the low-end part of the spectrum accessible through temping firms and such). Most companies will want you to have either the credentials OR the experience (I have never been employed by someone who demanded both, but then, I don't have both). Job experience makes up for a lot.

As a technical writer, I have worked in-house as a direct employee, as a consultant contracted to the client, and in-house as a separate billing agency that essentially treats other direct employees in other departments as "clients." That's the whole gamut of possibilities, I think. It depends on the opportunity. All have their benefits and their liabilities.

Someone looking to break into technical writing for the first time would probably be best served by finding a company that does consulting and contracting work. There are many "temp" firms that have technical departments, like Adecco/TAD Technical, Spherion (formerly Interim Technologies), Manpower, Kelly (I was a "Kelly Girl" back when their temp literature still assumed most of their clerical employees were female). Some of these temp firms will administer tests to see how competent you are with basic office skills like typing and writing. They would be a good way to get your foot in the door and to amass some experience in related writing jobs, if you have none and don't necessarily have the right credentials.

If you are a competent writer, you're already ahead of the game if looking to become a technical writer. I have a portfolio of samples taken from various jobs (which gets harder to fill as my jobs become more information-sensitive -- a lot of the things on which I work cannot be shared outside the companies where I did the work and I always honor confidentiality agreements) that includes technical illustrations I've done, some newsletters, some Operations and Maintenance Manuals, and some other pieces of literature performed on the job. If assembling a portfolio from other types of writing, stick to non-fiction and journalism whenever possible. Don't use fiction unless you absolutely have nothing else, and even then don't expect to do very well with that.

One quick way to impress an employer is to assemble your own portfolio material by showing how YOU can improve others' work. Clip a sample of some documentation somewhere -- an advertisement for an industrial firm, or a set of instructions from a piece of equipment you bought, anything like that. Edit it and make it demonstrably better in terms of sentence structure, grammar, ease of reading, etc. Don't do this with those obviously-translated-from-Chinese instructions, though -- that's cheating. You'd be surprised how much bad writing exists out there. For example, a web search on Industrial Coolers brought me this text for an auction of an old vintage cooler:

One of the smallest coin operated coolers ever made, this cooler was produced in the late 1930s. The cooler was filled with ice, and could vend 12 bottles. Believe it or not, an even smaller model was also produced, which could hold only 8 bottles. Measures 16.4 inches wide by 10.5 inches high. This piece has been completely restored with the exception of the coin mechanism, which is not in working order.

The text can be improved for structure and reading level (always dumb down) as follows:

This vintage cooler, produce in the late 1930s, is among the smallest coin-operated units ever made. It was filled with ice and could vend twelve bottles. (An even smaller model -- which held only eight bottles -- was also available.) This completely restored piece measures 16.4 inches wide by 10.5 inches high. The coin mechanism DOES NOT function.

There are a lot of conflicting rules at play. For example, you generally write out numbers from one to ten, but not when the numbers are followed by units. You shouldn't use a comma after "and" unless you're writing a list (most people don't know this rule). The parenthetical statement about the smaller unit should probably be ditched completely, because it actually makes the advertised unit seem less desirable (it's not the smallest unit ever made, so why do I want to buy it instead of one of those eight-bottle units...). I tend to over use the m-dash or "--," but that's a personal style. See all the room there is for improvement, though?

I am happy to answer any questions you have, here or in e-mail. Keep in mind, though, that I can only draw from my own experiences; there are other writers whose career paths and job experiences are quite different, I am sure.

 

[Cruentus]

Thanks again Phil.

I will pass this information along to my wife. She is highly experienced as a litigation paralegal (7 years in the field), and spends a good deal of time summerizing documents, along with other kinds of professional writing in her field. because of confidentiality, it may be difficult for her to find good writing samples.

The law firm scene has gotten a bit old; so she is possibly looking for a change within the next couple of years - to do something that utilizes her writing and research skills, but where she isn't working for dickheads all day long who seem to want a lot for little from their support staff (this seems to be a condition at every law firm; even though now that she is at one of the largest and most prestigious in Michigan, she still runs into this problem).

I will pass this information along to her, and we'll see what happends. We may e-mail you at some point if she has more questions

Thank you again!

Paul

 

[psi_radar]

Just out of plain ole curiosity, that snapple bottle... I can see the defect obviously and probably would've still drank out of it if there were no cracks or breaks in it and maybe even kept the bottle for out of it's weirdness... for about two or three months then chucked it in the garbage where it belongs, but am at a loss as to why it would've been culled at the factory. It doesn't seem to me to be a hazard or anything, or is it just not the perfectly shaped bottle that it should've been. Would that have been the reason or is there another ... :idunno: just wondering.

One reason it would be culled is that the serving size marked on the bottle may be greater than the contents. Believe it or not, companies can get in a lot of trouble for undercutting labeled volume, even if it's an accident.

Hi Phil,

Since this is about your work, I was curious. How do you get into technical writing?

My wife is degreed, and does a lot of legal writing for her work, but has been interested in getting into technical writing. Some advice would be appreciated.

Paul

Hi Paul,

One of the hats I wear is Technical Copywriter, which is similar to a Technical Writer, only with a more marketing bent. This is another option for your wife. The best way to become a Technical Writer or Copywriter is to just become a writer first and build a solid portfolio of work. Your wife should save all her work and volunteer for every writing assignment that might come along, even do freelance and consider pro bono writing for charity, nonprofits, etc. I started out as a Deputy Press Secretary, writing press releases, Web pages, brochures, speeches, etc. By the time I left I had enough of a portfolio that I was hired by an advertising agency as a Junior Copywriter. Writing is writing; if a prospective employer perceives you as having the writing chops and ability to synthesize diverse subject matter, that's often enough for an entry level position.