On Halloween, my brother and I, in company with my wife and a couple other friends, visited an English teacher we had both had in high school. I took her English class my junior year, and then the next year, I took her creative writing and world mythology class. I came to that class hungry and didn’t leave disappointed. Denise was the advisor of the school literary magazine, and I contributed stories, poetry, and art, as well as serving on the selection and editorial board for the collection.

I hadn’t seen Denise in nearly ten years, though we had emailed a little. She asked us about what is going on, and I told her that I document software for the Church. Denise asked if I enjoy it, and I said yes, and they keep me busy.

She replied knowingly, “Yeah, but technical writing…”

Her response was interesting. Even after nearly a decade, she knew that tech comm hadn’t changed my ultimate career goal. Long before my senior year in high school, I had decided on a career in creative writing. That year, Denise recognized that I wasn’t there for an easy “A,” for a social hour, or to wind down in the final period of the day. I was there because I was interested in the class. She gave me encouragement then, and after all this time, she’s still convinced that I’m cut out for what I’ve wanted to do since the eighth grade.

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Alert: Grammar complaint. Don’t worry, it’s not my intent to figuratively bludgeon you with a textbook or rap your knuckles with a yardstick.

Due to a push for gender equality, the pronoun “he”—and its brothers, “his” and “him”—are rarely accepted anymore as talking about an unidentified person. That’s fine; I don’t have as much of a problem with that. It’s the fact that since in English we don’t have a neutral singular pronoun, people instead have introduced “they,” “their,” and “them” as the substitute to avoid the clunky “he or she.”

The cure is worse than the disease.

Take this line from a recent email:

“Do a Colleague a Favor, Invite Them to Join STC.”

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When you read something, do you hear the writer’s voice in your head?

That is, when you actually know what the writer’s voice sounds like.

I remember an assignment in a college writing theory class in which I had to discuss whether I have an inner voice when I read. I asserted that I do, one of my supporting points being that when I’m reading silently and come across a word I don’t know how to pronounce, I recognize that I don’t know how to pronounce it. If I were reading with no voice speaking in my head, I wouldn’t care about pronunciation.

I just wondered a few days ago whether I hear a coworker’s voice when reading her email or his IM. I think my inner reading voice isn’t even my own voice; it’s pretty neutral, while my speaking voice is in the bass range. It’s a similar voice, I think, when I’m reading coworkers’ messages. But still, I think there’s a hint of the person’s voice there.

Come to think of it, I don’t even think my thoughts are in my own voice, but rather in that same neutral voice. It calls into question the show and movie where someone’s thoughts are broadcast audibly, and people can recognize the voice. I wonder if that would really be the case. Since an unspoken thought doesn’t go through your vocal cords, how can it have your physical voice?

Okay, I’m done. Just one of those writing-related things that I started thinking about.

On a day that is infamous to Americans, let us pay tribute to those who have lost their lives in order that we can remember the privileges that are ours.

Let us realize that it shouldn’t take a terrorist attack for us to feel united and to be united.

Let us look back and see how easy it can be within a matter of a few years to forget those things that should have changed us for the better.

Let us then remember and change.

May those who have given up time, safety, strength, limb, and life be honored on earth and in heaven for their sacrifices for their fellow beings.

May those who have lost their lives in defense of the United States of America and the freedom of the world’s peoples be borne to God as on eagles’ wings.

A while back I started thinking as a writer about the fact that programmers “write” code. I came up with more differences than similarities between the writing a programmer does and the writing I do as a technical communicator.

A programmer has to follow very specific, strict rules when writing code. If he doesn’t follow those rules, his “writing” isn’t going to be interpreted correctly. When that happens, things break. But that’s because it’s a computer that has to do the interpreting.

To some degree, a writer has rules to follow—they’re called spelling and grammar. (There’s a reason that code structure is referred to as syntax.) If those rules are flagrantly broken, you may have a similar problem to bad code; the recipient interprets incorrectly or doesn’t know how to interpret it at all.

However, writers have some leeway. Readers aren’t as strict as computers. They can infer meaning even if the rules aren’t followed to the letter. Writers also have freedom in vocabulary, but programmers can’t substitute established jargon in their code without breaking it.

I’m sure it is these differences that draw some people toward programming—they like the hard and fast rules that avoid guesswork—and pull others toward real writing. I like to do some coding, but it’s playing with language and words that interests me in writing. I like the freedom, not a computer telling me how to write.

And that’s the reason I have grammar check permanently turned off.

When I met other technical communicators at the STC conference in June and told them that I work for the LDS Church, most were at least a little surprised. What does a church need technical writers for?

As I answer that question, bear in mind that we’re not classifying marketing writers as part of this (especially because we’re not selling anything). Our team is called the “user education” team, so our concern is teaching users.

But what are we teaching them to use?

Our Church’s headquarters includes an IT department, part of which exists to develop and maintain Web sites and applications. Church software is designed to provide resources for Church members to learn about the gospel of Jesus Christ and perform their ecclesiastical responsibilities. It also helps others learn about and understand the Church.

Some applications help workers at headquarters accomplish their day-to-day tasks, and other systems are used by people in their homes or church offices to perform certain ecclesiastical duties. The work they do with Church software is important to them not just because it’s part of something a leader or manager expects of them, but also because these tasks are immediately connected to their beliefs. They have the deepest kind of interest in the success of their work.

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Today, I trained a small group of users on an application in expectation of next week’s release. I had printed a small booklet for them that gives instructions; though many tech buffs will argue that the printed manual is dead, there are those users who still ask for them.

Anyway, I had the booklets printed and bound in our in-house document printing center. I picked them up before the training so I would have them ready to hand out at the end of the training session. I’ve had the experience before when I opened a freshly printed manual that I had gone through with the finest toothed comb I had, only to see a problem as soon as I opened the book.

The problem this time wasn’t a typo or missing image; using InDesign, I had put a tan-to-white gradient behind chapter headings, and upon being printed, that gradient turned into a solid, quite devilish, red. (My wife asks, “How did you manage that?” I can only shrug.) The headings are still readable, but I sure was surprised at this outcome. The worst part is there is just about no red in my color scheme.

What surprises have you encountered with either electronic or print publishing?