Ken Circero on the banality of techical writing:
The ability to deliver software manuals (or, “docs”) on the Web has taken the technical writing world by storm. Tech writers the world over are singing its praises. The way they carry on, you’d have thought someone had discovered a way to flash the docs in the night sky like the Bat signal. At technical writing conventions (Sweet Moses! I can’t even type that without yawning), every session seems to discuss docs on the Web. It’s good for the software maker, good for the author, and good for the customer, they say. And it’s hard to argue. The company gets off cheap. As a writer, I no longer have to allow for an extra month for the manuals to be printed and bound, or even burned to disk, so there’s less of a chance that I’ll be staying late at the office to meet a deadline. And the consumer gets to enjoy continuous publishing, which just means that your manuals are always up to date.
(Thanks, Jenny).