#15086
Egoless Writing: Improving Quality by Replacing Artistic Impulse With Engineering Discipline 
When technical communicators have a strong personal attachment to the publication they are preparing, this attachment may interfere with the design and testing of the publication itself. Documents developed by solo authors tend to be late, buggy, and exceedingly difficult for others to maintain. 'Ego-less' methods---collaborative and structured---break the proprietary connection between the writer and the book; in so doing they permit the most powerful tools of engineering and testing to be used. But they also reduce the satisfactions of the communicator's job.
Weiss, Edmond H. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Content Management>Documentation
#20320
Postmodernism is the recommended posture for technical writers working in international contexts. But should professional writers, adapting to local cultures, automatically adjust their most firmly held communication principles? O, are there technical or ethical criteria higher than the obligation to adapt.
Weiss, Edmond H. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>TC>Cultural Theory
#22923
Review: The Metaphysics of Information Quality: Comments on Producing Quality Technical Information
The expressed promise in the title of Producing Quality Technical Information is that following its prescriptions will yield 'quality' technical information. This commentary asks what the term quality means here and whether the manual delivers on its promise. In other words, which of the several senses of quality is intended in the title, and the does the publication deliver as promised? That is, which of the major quality schemes corresponds to the rationale of the text: legalistic quality, in which quality is conformity to a long list of detailed regulations and specifications (as in ISO 9000); principle-based quality, in which quality is the result of working according to a small set of broad precepts; or mystical quality, in which quality is an indefinable property or spiritual construct, toward which virtuous people should aspire.
Weiss, Edmond H. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Reviews>Quality>Assessment
