If I asked you how many pages you wrote every day, would you know? We calculated how many pages we wrote per week and then divided it across the team. It was less than we had thought. Actually, we felt guilty that we were performing so poorly. It turns out that other Publishing Depts across the company were more or less then same.
How Many Pages Tech Writers Write Depends…
I’ve also seen this question asked on LinkedIn this week. I’m not sure what the background was but you need to be careful who’s asking this question and WHY.
For example, why would HR need to know how many pages you can write.
- Are you getting benchmarked?
- Will this be recorded against future performances?
- Will this impact your annual review?
- What does it say about your colleagues? Is your performance being used to beat them with a stick, so to speak.
How to Calculate Page Count?
To be honest, I think this is a flawed strategy as tech writers do more than write but if you are asked…
- Calculate the number of pages written over 30 day period (min)
- Calculate the number of images and/or multimedia that was created for each doc. For example, Release Notes rarely have screenshots whereas most User Guides will.
- Break out the amount of time for research, setup, review and formatting.
- Add in other variables as you wish to give a more rounded picture.
You can work to a rough ‘guesstimate’ based on this approach.
What am I missing? And what would be your reaction if you were asked this question?
PS – How many pages do you think we wrote?
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My first reaction would be, this question is much too narrow and I would hope it’s not used as a benchmark for all tech writers.
Writing is a small percentage of the job. Researching and using the product takes up much more time than the actual documentation. Not to mention creating and tweaking help systems and templates, learning new tools and processes, and lately, for a lot of us, creating video, which opens up an entirely new set of expectations and can’t possibly be measured “per page.”
My “guestimate” would be probably 5 or less. More than 20 years ago I did some documentation estimates for a start-up that was calculating writer man-years required to produce the anticipated documentation for the project. The total estimate was staggering. The formula included 1) expected no. of manual pages, 2) percentage of manual available in draft or readily accessible resources, 3) percentage of manual from scratch (research required). Note that the dtp and graphics tools were far less sophisticated then, too. I think I used something like 5 pp/day from scratch, 8-10 pp/day with rough resources available, and 15-20 pp/day for editing markups after reviews. Twenty years later, I don’t think my rules of thumb have changed much.
Hi Ted,
I think it reflects a few things. One is how little other depts know about the TW’s role (which may not be their fault, btw) and also the usage of benchmarks in companies.
I was surprised to see this asked on Linkedin but as many other writers seem to have been down this road, I thought it best to take a look at see how others address this.
Another way of looking at this is to ask how would one measure one’s work as a Tech Writer/Communicator?
I’m not sure as the role covers many areas but I can also see why different Depts would want some baseline.
Does that make sense?
That’s a very thorough way to do it. Our team leader worked out that we did 2.5 pages per day. I have to say it was very tough stuff to write, really gritty and also no s/shots.
I’ve done other projects since then and have ploughed thru things faster.
The third point is interesting as a lot of my work is refining docs and/or reformatting them.
I must take a harder look at the LI post and see what were the averages there.
My best work reduces the amount of pages needed. For example, providing feedback on a poor software user interface that results in improving the interface enough to require little or no documentation. Sure, I can crank out pages, but improving the product is priceless.
How does one measure that sort of input from a tech writer?
That’s a great way of looking at it.
And, it’s not something more people would appreciate at first, ie the less you write, the higher the quality.
I think the question may have been asked to determine ‘productivity’ in one office v offshoring. Just my 2c.
Seems a very crude and flawed way to assess how writers work but if that’s what the market is doing, then we need to make contingencies.
Hello,
Estimates are very, very difficult to make.
My rule of thumb, based on the good old days at Bombardier Technical Publications Regional Jet Division (1992-1994) and on twenty years of experience, is three hours per new text page, and one point five hours per revised text page.
It is true that 85 per cent of writing new material involves research. If you have a Single Source of Product Data (SSPD), this makes this research task easier and much more accurate. Before Boeing went to SSPD, I had to review at least four of fourteen sources of data before I had the confidence to write accurately.
I give clients two options:
1. A rate based on an estimate of three hours per page times estimated pages times my hourly rate
2. A rate based on the actual pages produced times my hourly rate.
At the end of the day, the client pays the lesser of the two amounts, I am paid for what I produce, no one makes a windfall or takes advantage of the other, and all is fair. Clients really appreciate this and you have a better chance of repeat business. This practice is in agreement with that of Lockheed Skunk Works: when they made a windfall profit on a project for the US Government, they always offered to return a part of that profit.
Cordialement,
Ralph Neumann
Montpellier, France
Okay, for the first part, “why would [upper management] need to know how many pages you can write”? my response is “They won’t tell you.” All of those options you propose are possible. The annual review may be the only place you will get an answer, and by then it’s too late.
For the second part, I agree wholeheartedly if you are a salaried employee and you have a history to work your calculations from. I am concerned, however, that if you are a consultant/freelance coming into a project cold you are going to have problems. I think you can try to apply the same ideas based on your work with other companies, but the stats are likely to be all over the board. Nevertheless, I think these ideas are a great starting point, even for freelancers. They can be adapted, with a bit of thought and creativity, to those of us who change projects regularly.
Hi Corson,
I agree with your second point and would add that consultant’s need to shift the focus from quantity to quality.
If you’re in the business of cranking out pages and no more than that, then you’re up against low cost providers, esp from overseas.
I see freelancers and others in this area providing more strategic offerings and carving out a niche for themselves to providing more direction and high level inputs.
Of course, like you said, one needs to be creative and find ways that work for oneself.
Yes, I would say about 2-2.5 pages a day is about right. Of course it depends on the complexity of the subject. But given that you understand the subject, have done your research, tested the application and are now in a position to start writing, about two pages a day of good content sounds reasonable. Some people have reacted with shock and scepticism when I’ve said this. Of course, there are lots of pressures to churn out lots of content fast.
This is a good topic Ivan and I am going to see how much content I produce over the next few months. I’m very curious.
Jason
Thanks Jason,
I think the confusion is between ‘writing’ and ‘typing’. Most of us can type 10-20 pages in an hour but writing something so that there is no ambiguity, every option is covered, and it’s easy to read… looks easy until you try it
I’ll write about this again soon as it seems to be have struck a chord among other tech writers.
Ivan
I am a technical person and wants to shift to TW field. And in technology what we follow is lesser numbers of coding statements in order to reduce the errors in the software. Means, we should write short loops and big single syntax, here I will refer it as One-Word-For-A-Statement. Even though the content of the document is less but that will tell you one thing buy it and it will help you. I think that’s what is required then the importance of quantity. People do become lethargic reading a big book then a short note.
I’d agree with that. You need to keep the material short so the reader can find the answers quickly but with enough info so they don’t have to go searching elsewhere.
One point though I want to discuss is when the type of Audiences is vast then the amount of contect tends to increase. We have to keep the content for each type of audiences at every step of the document. But still in TW there is a concept called as FOG INDEX. In this,
A> Count the Syllable words,
B> Count all the sentences.
C> A/B.
D> Count all the long words.
E> FOG INDEX = C + 0 * 0.4
If the result of ‘E’ is less than or equal to 13 then the content is said to be DANGEROUS, GOOD other wise.
Just to share a part of TW.
Thanks,
I’d forgotten about the FOG INDEX. Something i need to look into again.
Great post, Ivan. This is precisely why I think “technical communication” is a better way to describe what we’re doing since it involves a lot more than just writing…
Thanks Ugur, you’re right. I spend less than 15 hours per week writing, the rest is other comms tasks.