Now that’s a major copy-editing FAIL.

“But how?” my students ask. “How do you actually do it?”

You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again.

Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind – a scene, a locale, a character, whatever – and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt. Also, severe hypochondria. There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk. There is a vague pain at the base of your neck. It crosses your mind that you have meningitis. Then the phone rings and you look up at the ceiling with fury, summon every ounce of noblesse oblige, and answer the call politely, with maybe just the merest hint of irritation. The caller asks if you’re working, and you say yeah, because you are.

Sound familiar? The hardest part about writing is definitely the writing part. Anyway, just wanted to share that with you.

This little ditty isn’t exactly inspiring with lyrics like these: “So I spend my day inside a lonely pod, but I need a job, so I gotta be a technical writer.” But hey, it’s worth a laugh anyway.

Source: Joyoftech.com

The top 16 things likely to be overheard if you had Klingon technical writers working on your documentation team:

1. Klingons do not sit in meetings, we take what we want and kill anyone who opposes us!
2. Certification?! Taking your head and putting it on a pike in my office is all the certification I need!
3. I will return to the homeworld and my documentation will arise triumphant in the STC Documentation Gauntlet, leaving all others drowning in their own dangling modifiers. It will be glorious!!
4. Not returning my review copies by the agreed deadline is a declaration of war. Indeed, it is a good day to die.
5. These software specifications are for the weak and timid!!
6. This version of Word is a piece of GAGH! I need the latest version of Framemaker if I am to do battle with this manual.
7. You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you’ve read it in the original Klingon.
8. Indentation?! I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
9. What is this talk of “drafts”? Klingons do not make document “drafts”. Our documents escape, leaving a bloody trail of SMEs in its wake!
10. Passive voice is a sign of weakness. Its elimination will be quick.
11. Proofreading? Klingons do not proofread. Our documents are purified with pain-sticks which cleanses the documents of impurities.
12. I have challenged the entire Marketing and R&D team to a Bat-Leh contest! They will not concern us again.
13. A TRUE Klingon warrior riddles his document with bullets, leaving it to beg for mercy.
14. By changing the layout of my manual, you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!
15. You question the worthiness of my grammar? I should kill you where you stand!
16. Our users will know fear and cower before our suite of manuals and online help! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Source: Documentia, Inc.

 Okay, okay, this story seems too bizarre to be true, and so it is. This article was later determined to be a fake. I mean think about it – even if the office had it’s air conditioning turned up to the max (unlikely on a cold October day in New York), the corpse would have started emitting an offense odour after three days. The point of this fabricated article is, and I quote: “Don’t work too hard because nobody notices anyway.” And it sucks to be a proofreader!