Welcome, wordsmiths!
Before I begin, I’d like to start where I always like to begin, with some history.
My grandfather worked for a long-since-acquired company that created and laid submarine cables, the long and large network of cables lurking under the sea that enable communications between countries worldwide. When he laid them from the back of the large ships that ran between the UK and Canada, he was laying gigantic reams of copper wires mostly meant for telephone and telegram traffic. By the time he retired, the internet existed in some rudimentary form, telephones were widespread, and he gave me a nugget of advice that I still remember today, despite being too young to really understand what he meant:
And he was right. Now, there are more submarine cables than ever, shuttling petabytes of data back and forth per day. Our work and play rely so much on a relatively small amount of vulnerable wires that rest on the ocean bed, are prone to damage and attack, and have disconnected smaller nations from the world.
I digress. Why am I telling you this in a book about tech writing?
My grandfather started his professional career as a technical artist. He drew up plans and instructions on how to make and lay these essential cables, plus how to use the machinery needed for the task. I can’t imagine he ever anticipated much of the work you and I do now (he died in 2001), but I could imagine that he would be amused that we ended up in related careers and fascinated by some of the projects I have worked on.
My point is that if we consider “technical writing” to mean explaining something to someone else so they can understand it and how to use it to accomplish their goals, then “technical writing” is everywhere.
