2-99 (June 1999) by Frederick Menezes Special Aspects India

A technical writer is mostly involved in writing and designing user guides, brochures, and white papers for a variety of products. Though none of these activities are new, their categorisation under Technical Writing is a comparatively, a recent happening in India.

This survey attempts to peep behind the curtain and learn a bit more about those India’s technical writing profession.

 

Scope and Purpose

Though the technical writing field in India is growing faster than ever before, no institution in the country imparts any kind of technical writing course or training. Some University courses include a paper in Technical Writing, but its scope is very limited. Also, no figures are available about the number of technical writers in India. Rough estimates suggest that there could be as many as 200 spread across the country.

So, if there is no formal technical writing training in the country, how did these approximately 200 persons get into the field? What are their academic qualifications? What field were they in before switching to technical writing?

This survey report centres around these questions and attempts to answer and analyse them.

 

Methodology

About 140 technical writers in India subscribe to an electronic mailing list called TWIN (Technical Writers of India). Thus, if you want to get through to Indian technical writers, TWIN is the best medium. The data for this survey has been gathered through TWIN.

The following four questions were posed to the technical writers:

1. What is your academic background?
2. What were your previous jobs before technical writing?
3. How/where did you hear about technical writing? How did you get into the field?
4. For how many years have you been involved in technical writing?

 

Academic and Job Background

Technical writers are primarily writers who attempt to explain technical intricacies or concepts to a lay person. Therefore it is imperative that technical writers are technically competent to understand what they write about. A technical background for a technical writer definitely helps though it does not mean that those without a technical background cannot be technical writers.

If Indian technical writers are arranged according to their technical or non-technical background, the division looks like this:

However, technical writers who have a technical background do not necessarily have a degree/diploma in their field; rather, some may have worked in that field in some technical capacity.

 

English Literature, Journalism, Advertising & Marketing

Command over the language and a flair for writing are absolute musts for technical writers. Generally, those with a background in English Literature or Journalism are considered to have the skills and therefore could make good technical writers.

Probably, we can also include those in Advertising & Marketing in this category, if they have been involved in copywriting, preparing marketing material, and so on.

A substantial percentage of Indian technical writers have a background in English Literature, Journalism or Advertising & Marketing:

However, we cannot assume that all technical writers who fall into these categories have been involved in writing per se; that is, not all students of English Literature or Journalism may have sufficient writing background.

 

Writing

About two-thirds of Indian technical writers were engaged in some form of writing before switching to technical writing. While most of these technical writers were in journalism, a few others were involved in freelance writing, copywriting or research oriented writing.

 

Freshers

Although there are no formal technical writing courses in India, and awareness of technical writing is low, it is interesting that quite a number of Indian technical writers have started into a career as a technical writer, i.e. technical writing was their first-ever job:

Another interesting revelation from the survey is that some top Indian software companies recruit technical writers directly from the campus. Asia’s largest IT company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) along with Wipro Infotech, Aditi Technologies and other software firms have conducted campus recruitment for technical writers at one time or the other. Recruitment of this kind has taken place at least at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications of a prominent University and some private computer education institutes.

 

How Technical Writers got into the Field

One of the basic motivations for this survey was to find out how India’s approximately 200 technical writers came to be in the field that they are in.

The survey reveals that a substantial number got into the field without having a clear picture about the job they were supposed to do. These technical writers mostly answered advertisements thinking they would fit the bill.

A lot of technical writers also seem to have been introduced to the field by friends and family members who were already technical writers or who were aware of the field.

The majority of technical writers, however, came to know about technical writing through the organisation they were working in. These people apparently came in contact with people doing documentation in their respective organisations, took a liking to what the documentation people were doing, and embarked on the path of technical writing themselves:

 

Experience Range of Indian Technical Writers

As expected, the survey suggests that technical writing has been picking up in India in the past few years. Today, about half of India’s technical writers fall in the experience bracket of 2 to 4 years. There are also a few veterans in the field with over 8 years of experience extending up to 12 years:

 

Conclusion

The growth of technical writing in India and the kind of people in the profession make for an interesting study. Indian technical writers come from diverse backgrounds and appear to have adapted quite well to their new-found profession.

This survey, probably the first of its kind, has been a preliminary attempt to identify the backgrounds of technical writers and how they got into the technical writing profession. Ideally, the data collected for this survey should be further correlated to produce an enhanced and comprehensive study.  

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