It’s the new fallback for English majors who couldn’t write that best seller, or journalism majors who couldn’t cut it at the magazine of their dreams.  There are several forms of technical writing, but the lowliest and most common I come across in want ads, have to do with translating “tech-speak.”

To break it down, there are a lot of people out there who are very knowledgeable in whatever field they are in, be it medical technology or, say, multi spindle screw machines.  They’re problem is that either by some natural quirk in their brains or, more likely, shortcoming in the public school systems, they never learned how to translate that knowledge onto paper in every day English with perfect grammar that your average drone can understand.

Take the multi spindle machines, or whatever they’re called, for example.  The techs would give the technical writer a bunch of manuals full of technical terms upon technical terms-like automatic lathe and CNC turning centers, turning operations, boring, operations and so on-with misspelled words, comma splices, and, in some cases, even incomplete sentences, and so on.

The technical writer would interpret those technical terms into every day speech.  For instance the “turning operation” is the part of the sequence where the metal bar is shaped.  Then he or she would pretty much copy the useable parts, just using an active voice in place of the passive voice the techs had used (generally, because they think it makes them seem smarter), and tidying up the horrendous punctuation and grammar.

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