Member-only story
Why I Became a Technical Writer
We need more respect!
When I wrote my assignments for my high school and university courses, my wordsmithing was guided by my English-speaking brain — on some kind of autopilot — to find the right grammatical structures for me. “Does this sentence look/sound/feel right?” If yes, the sentence was deemed acceptable and locked in its place in the assignment.
This technique worked reasonably well for I was regarded as a better writer of my peers. This swelled my head a bit, but my peers could only be regarded as somewhat capable in their skills. So I never asked: “What do I really know about good writing? People with swelled heads usually don’t ask these kinds of questions.
Ten years after graduating from engineering, I found myself in Czechoslovakia teaching English to people emerging from communist rule. The language schools I was working for used popular English teaching workbooks. These workbooks were also teaching me about the nuances of the English language.
Did you know there is a big difference between:
1) I have studied English,
2) I have been studying English,
3) I studied English, and
4) I was studying English?
