Ever thought about what goes into creating the user manuals or instruction brochures of your television, washing machine, cell phone or even the maintenance guides? Most of just manage to glance through the item, leave alone going into the technical details.

  Since such information is meant for the layman, simplifying the jargons associated with any particular product or process is the key function of technical writers. A bridge between technology and its users, technical writing is also the 'science' of designing, validating and packaging the information created to meet a certain objective. The irony of the situation is that in spite of playing such a crucial role, not much work has been done to assess the skills of technical writers. The IT industry which absorbs major chunk of technical writers has also shied away from giving due credit to this field.

  In today's customer-centric business model, the very process of acquiring and losing deals depends o the effectiveness of the technical writers. Any organization that is conscious about the information/messages catering to its customers, employees or business partners employs technical writers who are specialists. For a software services organization, its user manuals and technical write-ups act as its public face and reflects its level of professionalism.

Technical Writing as a specialized profession:

  At an estimate, there should be at least one technical writer, for 30 programmers. But in spite of their growing need, this profession is not popular enough. Although, technical communication has been in existence for a long time, its emergence as a niche profession is only a recent development.

  According to the figures furnished by the Society for Technical Communication (STC) there are roughly 1200/1500 technical writers in India, while US has over a lack of technical communicators. Many experts cite the lack of awareness as a key reason (both among the corporate and the individuals) to make it a potential career prospect. Technical writing as a field has various segments, like documentation specialist, instructional designer, proposal writer, resume writer, copy writer, marcom specialist, or even a technology, journalist. But not many people are willing to make people are willing to make it a full-fledged profession.

  In spite of having abundant talent, the problem seems to be the lack of proper organized system or infrastructure to groom them into potential writers.

  Unlike the west, here the emphasis is on on-the-job training .There are hardly any institutes offering certified courses on this subject which hampers the growth of the profession. The lack of certified courses increase the initial training period of the individual considerably. The veterans in this field generally have a background in English Literature with technical exposure. Since the on-the-job training is popular, technically qualified people are preferred over people from other fields.

The Education front:

  Lack of an institutional set-up, in order to train prospective students, is the prime reason for the area remaining unexplored. Though the demand is ever-growing, there are hardly any institutes that conduct a formal degree course in technical writing. Though there are some university courses that include a paper in technical writing (like a certificate course offered by Chennai-based S.A. International in association with Simon Fraser University, Canada or the optional paper in Technical Writing by the Calicut University in their Mass Communication course), their scope is very limited.

  However, things are quite different abroad. There are universities that impart training just on technical writing. There are host of foreign universities offering a variety of technical communication programmes ,including Masters degree courses. Many of the universities also offer courses over the Internet.

  However, aspiring technical writers are not able to avail of the benefits of such courses due to the exorbitant fees charged by them. The costs, by our standards, are pretty high. A course broken into several unit could cost about Rs.25,000. The only help that most technical writers get, is from the mailing lists like TECHWR-L, TechComm, TWIN and STC, which have an India specific focus.

  Some of the organizations formed by Indian technical writers (holding daily online seminars) serve as a good guide. These sessions enable beginners to get an insight into the profession as well as to interact with senior members.

Who can be a Technical Writer:

  Another concern area for the growth of technical writing is the kind of work culture that exists in organizations .Things have got more to do with the attitude of the upper management in organizations. As long as they consider documentation is a secondary activity, there would be some differences between software developers and technical writers. The increasing use of IT in other segments like engineering, automotives, aeronautics, military, bioinformatics, medicine, mechanics and even rocket sciences bring about an impressive picture. This apart, there is an equal demand coming from newspapers, tech magazines, e-magazines, doctcoms, advertising agencies and technology based companies like computer software and hardware firms.

   Technical writing can be considered to be a separate revenue generating department considering the massive growth in the number of software companies getting into BPO and ITES segment. These two segments generally require a lot of outsourcing work in terms of manuals.

Technical Writers' Association:

  Technical writing is a very creative field. With the kind of speed it is progressing with, the future surely looks resplendent for technical writers. All that is required is to take smart positive steps to get yourself and the sector recognized in the industry.

 

Courtesy : Deepika Education