Technical Authoring > Why You Need A Technical Author

While technical authoring is often considered to be a 'black art', technical authors are simply authors trained in - and with experience of - a number of different applicable disciplines.

However, many companies still seem unaware that technical authors (or writers) have skills which their own employees generally don't possess.  Consider the following:

	Technical authors are user orientated
	Technical authors are driven by the requirements of the end readers of documents.  As such, they have experience and knowledge of how best to present information, and of how to identify the best textual / graphical 'mix' of a document. If you use your own in-house employees, they are often 'too close' to a product to document it clearly.  What is considered 'obvious' to a product's designer or marketing specialist may not be so to the intended readers of the document.
	Technical authors are information specialists
	Technical authors are expert in determining exactly what information the reader needs to know (and conversely what he/she doesn't need to know).  As a result, documents produced by a technical author: (a) will contain all the relevant and necessary information (b) will not contain any irrelevant or unnecessary information. Point (b) is particularly worth highlighting. Documents produced in-house by non-specialists often contain much extraneous information which can confuse or confound the reader.  Also, consider that (one way or another), you have therefore paid for unnecessary information to be documented, which is not cost effective.
	Technical authors are language specialists
	There is a general consensus that the level of writing skills amongst the general population is deteriorating. (The increasing use of email and text messaging only serves to exacerbate the problem) While many believe that the use of 'spell checkers' is a panacea for writing errors, this is not the case. Unless you use skilled authors, many errors can remain undetected... at least until you publish your document, and then the errors are plain for all the world to see ! Technical authors are adept in the use of the English language, and will ensure that any text they produce is both grammatically and syntactically correct.

In summary, technical authors specialise in areas where your employees probably do not!  While it may seem that the use of outside technical authors is expensive, when viewed in the light of the overall development, marketing and support cycle of your product, use of specialist authors is probably your most cost effective option.