Technical Communicators: Whats in a Name?
Technical communication? What is that? The moniker is becoming increasingly popular around the world to describe those who we may have referred to in the past as technical writers or technical authors. So why the change? Technical writer and technical author were perfectly good descriptions. Yes they were, but like in most specialisms, times are changing. The role of the traditional tech writer is no longer just about producing handbooks or user instructions. It does still form an important part of the skill, but communication is now a much wider specialism. Think of the different media being employed – everything from paper to CDs, video and online help. The modern Technical Communicator needs to be competent in so much more than just writing and understanding the technical subject matter. Nowadays, they need a firm understanding of the publishing medium as well, and increasingly this means electronic publishing methods and the mark-up languages behind them, like XML, HTML or SGML. Te
