Technical Writer

By that time, Don had completed his B.A., and wanted to be promoted to the position of engineer. He had advanced from being a technician to being a technical writer. In fact, he became a group leader in the technical publications department. That was my introduction to technical writing as an occupation, although I had a cousin who had been a technical writer for some time. Don sometimes brought home some of his work for editing. He said, "A technical writer writes in the second person imperative." He showed me a document about the "Fog Index," a way of measuring how hard to read a text is. Basically, it means that long, complex sentences are harder to read than direct, basic sentences, and long words are harder to read than short words. It presented a formula for calculating how hard it is to read a text, in terms of grade-level in school. In other words, for a technical writer, shorter is better. That became one of my abiding rules when I later became a technical writer.

I think Don was good at technical writing, but he couldn't get the promotion to engineer that he wanted. So he started looking for another job.