Importance of Individual Contributor Role

The role of a technical communicator is being diversified in today's corporate world. As the demand for expertise, work requirements, areas of focus are increasing day by day, there is a similar modulation in regards to the roles handled by technical communicators of today's industry. The mapping of writers to the specific project may not exist all the time as there is a demand for these writers to showcase the expertise not only to the particular project but also should be able to support other business areas and organizational level activities. With such changes evolving in the definition of the roles, individual contributor role has gained much significance and importance in recent times. This has proved beneficial as they support multiple roles within the organization.

The Individual contributors reporting structure is also quite different when compared to a technical communicator's reporting structure when he/she is part of a team. They report directly to the director or business head and are highly responsible for decision making, project planning, driving standards, translation processes, reviews and enforcing quality at each and every level of the project phase till the release of end product deliverables to customer. The Individual contributors work with multiple projects apart from playing a keen role towards social networking activities within the organization. Working with multiple projects require high level of communication skills with good interaction with managers, project leads, employees and also should be a go getter when it comes to gathering of information from these teams. IC's work with the global teams and are well experienced in handling the customers/clients. Self-motivation is another key strength behind these roles. Without motivation, it would become difficult to meet these challenges, deadlines and project expectations.

The driving force behind these writers need to be simply amazing and effective. Without a proper and well equipped driving force in the minds of these writers, nothing can be achieved. To reach the extra mile or to stay focussed, the ICs are always a step ahead of others and ensure to reach the target on time with effective collaboration, appropriate delivery and quality of work.

Writing as a Process

Writing of any information in general is a very lengthy and complex process. As a writer starts writing one ore more documents, he holds to have a good expertise in his writing skills. For a writer, his previous works and experience plays an important role in his career. The appropriate usage of grammar and usage of technical terms in sentences comes by his/her experience.

As time passes by, writing becomes easier for a writer and it is an art of craft wherein every time the writer needs to be very careful about his documents written by him. Practice makes one perfect. Yes, this is true in the case of documentation. No theory or no formula can create a good document. Isn't it? Hope you all agree with me. Writing involves experience including thinking, planning, framing outline, research, gathering information.

However, the actual process when followed within the documentation life cycle becomes much more complex as this would involve lot of planning, design and writing activities. Several initial drafts would come out of this work and then the documents go through several changes.

Writing as a process involves choosing a topic/area of interest/technology information, looking into the aspects of technology, gathering information, discussions and research.

Technical Editing Standards

Editing skills are the key requirements especially when working with modification of articles/product information over a period of time. To edit an article/information, there rises a demand for several standards to be followed in order to ensure the changes not affecting the original meaning of the sentence/paragraph and the information needs to be understandable to the end user. A list of standards are provided here in order to make the text meaningful and the end user information easily understood. If correct editing standards have not been followed, then the article may not deliver the correct meaning or sometimes it might contain complicated terminologies that will not be understood by the end user.

Grammar: The content that is being edited should not change the original meaning of the sentence. The sentence needs to be in accordance with the english grammar standards.

Reference: The Elements of Style

Terminology Usage: When writing any articles, the important thing to be noted is regarding understanding the audience. It is very much required to understand who the end user is and his background knowledge. Editing any such articles for several different customers may require understanding the customer skills. Technical jargons or technical terminologies need to be stated in simple terms in order to make the end user understand the information provided.

Copyright: Be sure you take care of copyright issues while rewriting or using any existing content. Make sure you do not copy any information provided on the internet as it is bonded by copyright act. The changes need to be well defined.

Technical Editing can be divided in to the following three types:

• Substantive editing
• Copy editing
• Production editing

The editing tasks can be further classified into rule-based editing and analysis-based editing. All the grammar standards, adherance to legal requirements, design consistency, layout are part of the rule-based editing standards. Analysis-based editing is looking into more of the functional aspects of the editing standards. Evaluation of the document for concept, technicality, content, organization, functional aspects are dealt in the analysis-based editing stanard.

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