The Global Advisor Newsletter - Designing Technical Documentation for an International Audience.: "Introduction


You've just been assigned the task of producing a large technical manual for a new product, schedule for release in a few months. Oh, and by the way, this same document needs to be translated in five languages and all are scheduled for simultaneous release.

This scenario is being played out everywhere as US companies set their sights on global marketing."

deseretnews.com | Tech toys: Learning curve is a challenge

From ATTW-L

Related to Roy's query -- and interesting follow-ups -- I heard or read
once that a key difference between technical and business communication
can be seen along vertical or horizontal lines. For technical
communicators, the communication might be horizontal in that there's less
emphasis on hierarchy among readers (you can see where this scheme begins
to crack already -- bear with me for a moment): "users," subject-matter
experts, editors, clients, consumers, other technical communicators, &
etc.


On the other hand -- this is what I heard, not what I'm arguing, mind you
-- business communication is more hierarchical, and thus vertical in its
taxonomy -- committees, boards, executives, shareholders, competition,
corporate oversight ... & etc.


Whether or not these are interesting or helpful distinctions is debatable;
but has anyone else hear or read the vertical-horizontal distinction
somewhere? Can you point to where I might find it?


In Kynell's Writing in a Milieu of Utility, she shows how the disciplines
overlap and how they differ: business comm emerged from the needs of
commercial- and business-related enterprises, whereas technical
communication emerged from the needs of increasing uses of technologies.
In contemporary discipline formations, these boundaries seem to collapse
even more. More recently, Faber and Johnson-Eilola suggest that we're
'hybrid professionals' and that product knowledge, strategic design, and
business knowledge belong in the domain of technical communication, too.
(Their context is globalization, which is the impetus for my
vertical-horizontal distinction query.)


I'm looking at it in disciplinary terms -- rather than programmatic, which
is local -- and collapsed business communication with professional
communication.


Having sufficiently muddled it, then -- best wishes,


Michael