{"id":2207,"date":"2004-02-02T18:47:45","date_gmt":"2004-02-03T10:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/02\/03\/teaching-technical-writing\/"},"modified":"2019-12-09T16:01:58","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T00:01:58","slug":"teaching-technical-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/02\/02\/teaching-technical-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching? Technical writing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:11823,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/blog.liquidvolt.com\\\/typepad\\\/index.php&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20040622075309\\\/http:\\\/\\\/blog.liquidvolt.com:80\\\/typepad\\\/index.php&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 19:46:44&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-26 18:40:35&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 12:20:31&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-07 01:24:01&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-16 15:23:51&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-23 07:16:23&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-28 16:42:55&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-28 16:42:55&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:11824,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/blog.liquidvolt.com\\\/typepad\\\/viewtopic.php?p=3317#3317&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:11825,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/randomthinks.typepad.com\\\/rtblog&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20250911094444\\\/https:\\\/\\\/randomthinks.typepad.com\\\/rtblog\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 19:46:51&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-26 18:40:35&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 12:20:33&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-07 01:24:02&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-16 15:23:51&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-25 09:30:48&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-28 16:42:53&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-28 16:42:53&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:11826,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/blog.liquidvolt.com\\\/typepad\\\/viewtopic.php?p=3312#3312&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Every so often, a topic pops up in the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.liquidvolt.com\/typepad\/index.php\" title=\"TypePad User Group\">TypePad User Group forums<\/a> that I feel I can add my own particular little brand of insight into, and I&#8217;ll spend some time doing my best to explain (often in excruciating detail) what&#8217;s going on. I recently got a <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.liquidvolt.com\/typepad\/viewtopic.php?p=3317#3317\" title=\"TypePad stats gone wacko?\">very nice comment<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/randomthinks.typepad.com\/rtblog\/\" title=\"random thinks\">Doc<\/a> in response to <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.liquidvolt.com\/typepad\/viewtopic.php?p=3312#3312\" title=\"TypePad stats gone wacko?\">one such post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  &#8230;another excellent description. Are you sure there&#8217;s not a bit of teacher in you someplace?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The funny thing is that over the years, I&#8217;ve gotten quite a few comments along those lines from many friends of mine, and I&#8217;ve started considering the possibility of pursuing getting a teaching degree ~~if~~ [when]{.underline} I manage to get back into school. It&#8217;s always flattering to get comments like Doc&#8217;s that indicate that this might not be an entirely unrealistic goal.<\/p>\n<p>Another direction I sometimes toss around in my head is technical writing. I&#8217;ve come up with quite a few different &#8216;how-to&#8217; or explanatory posts (quite a few of which are <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/typepad\/index.html\" title=\"TypePad Archives\">archived here<\/a>) over time, and I&#8217;ve always enjoyed writing them out. There&#8217;s a definite satisfaction to being able to take a somewhat obscure concept (such as <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/09\/printfriendly_p.html\" title=\"Print-friendly pages with CSS\">printer stylesheets<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/07\/our_friend_the_.html\" title=\"Our friend, the humble 'title' attribute\">title attributes<\/a>, or [dealing with <code>blockquote<\/code> tags]) and finding a way to present it clearly (if not always concisely) so that it can be more easily understood.<\/p>\n<p>As long as I enjoy writing and have an apparent knack for things like this, I sometimes think that getting into technical writing &#8212; how-to&#8217;s, manuals, documentation, and the like &#8212; could be a very interesting way to make a living. Programmers and technicians can often come up with some wonderful applications and devices, but often can&#8217;t explain how or why they work as successfully as could be done. I can&#8217;t program to save my life, but if I have an ability to come up with decently-crafted explanations, why not explore that a bit?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I haven&#8217;t got the <em>foggiest<\/em> idea of how to get started, or even how to go about investigating the possibility. Still, it keeps kicking around in my head, so maybe one of these days I&#8217;ll stumble upon a direction to go in.<\/p>\n<p><strong>iTunes:<\/strong> &#8220;Eastern Promise (Dub Pistols vs.\u00a0Bow Wow Wow)&#8221; by Bow Wow Wow from the album <em>Groove Radio Presents Alternative Mix<\/em> (1999, 4:08).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every so often, a topic pops up in the TypePad User Group forums that I feel I can add my own particular little brand of insight into, and I&#8217;ll spend some time doing my best to explain (often in excruciating detail) what&#8217;s going on. I recently got a very nice comment from Doc in response to one such post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[13,65],"class_list":["post-2207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-life","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}