The importance of having writers on board from the beginning of a project: a European perspective

The author examines four problems surrounding technical communication in Europe: (1) lack of trained technical communicators; (2) lack of allotted time necessary to do the job well; (3) translatability issues; and (4) poorly articulated and written front-end documents, such as user requirements, proposals, functional specifications, and design specifications. For solutions the author suggests (1) incorporating a technical communicator early on in a project to assess technical documentation needs, as well as aiding the engineers in writing engineering documents and relieving the project manager/leader of the more onerous written tasks; (2) involving European technical communicators more in professional societies, such as IEEE-Professional Communication, ACM-SIGPC, and the Society for Technical Communication; and (3) developing more training programs in Europe