Unusual job: Technical writer | Stuff.co.nz

STACY SQUIRES/Fairfax NZ

MAKING SENSE: As a technical writer, Emma Harding helps turn gobbledegook into understandable instructions.

Getting a new television is exciting until you're sitting on the couch, remote in hand, unable to decipher the convoluted construction manual that came with it.

You have two choices: Throw the remote on the floor in disgust and leave the programme guide in German, or perservere with a manual which may as well be written in latin. A useless manual, help function, website or document is both infuriating and stressful.

This is where people like Emma Harding come in. Technical writers are hired to reduce, simplify, and streamline.

For Harding, her degree in linguistics is where it all started.

"I had an arts degree and all I wanted was a job. So it was my first job out of university. It's a really big field but it's not really known about in New Zealand."

Behind the scenes, technical writers are beavering away, trying to make the written world a better place - allowing consumers to finally master our remote controls.

They do more than re-word packaging and check for translation errors. Beyond the domestic user manual, they deal with all forms of the written word, for businesses, government departments, hospitals, and anyone in between. They often shoulder the responsibility for heavy machinery instruction manuals and user-friendly medical documents.

"Lots of people who come to us have written some content for something, like their website or their user-documents. A lot of these people are tertiary educated, they have a degree, and they think they can write.

"But what they've written is far too long or is really hard to understand. That's where we come in."

The range of problems confronting any user include the use of jargon, long sentences, convoluted corporate speak and confusing diagrams.

Unfortunately, not everything gets the technical writer once- over before it hits the public. Time and again we are baffled by language. On a blanket from Taiwan the warning reads: "Not to be used as protection from a tornado".

Even corporate giant Coca- Cola has fallen victim to excessive instruction, writing "Open other end" on the bottom of the can.

"Every person is constantly being bombarded with written material, a lot of which you don't even notice . . . but when you read unclear instructions, you notice immediately."

We've all seen them - the instructions and notices which have fallen victim to a particularly bad translation - "Not to be used for the other use".

Some instructions credit the consumer with far too little intelligence.

? On a soap package: "Use like regular soap".

? On a packet of nuts: "Warning: contains nuts", or "Instructions: open packet and eat nuts".

Some are just downright silly.

? On a hairdryer: "Do not use while sleeping".

? On a microwave pudding: "Product will be hot after heating".

"What we do, is take gobbledegook and make it understandable," says Harding.

- ? Fairfax NZ News

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Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/8526713/Unusual-job-Technical-writer

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