What AI Gets Wrong About Technical Writing - Elisabeth Hendrickson & Mysti Berry

What does AI actually get wrong about technical writing — and what does a skilled tech writer bring to the table that it can't replace?

Elisabeth Hendrickson sits down with Mysti Berry, a technical writer who has navigated three industry revolutions: client-server, SaaS, and now AI. Working across companies as diverse as Salesforce, Okta, CrowdStrike, and Twentieth Century Fox, Mysti brings rare depth and hard-won opinions to a craft that doesn't get nearly enough credit.

They get into how the role has changed over the decades, why AI is great at accelerating the boring parts but still can't replace human judgment, the surprising truth about links in documentation (almost nobody clicks them), how to actually measure whether your docs are working, and why adverbs are the liars of English.

Whether you're a technical writer, an engineering leader, or just someone who has ever been frustrated by bad documentation, this one's worth your time.

Mysti Berry has written technical documentation through three revolutions: client-server, SaaS, and now AI. Working for companies as diverse as Salesforce, Okta, CrowdStrike, and Twentieth Century Fox, she provides writing and editing services to software companies and loves to talk about information architecture with fellow practitioners.
Where to find Mysti:
Mysti's LinkedIn ➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mystiberry/
Mysti's GitHub ➡️ https://github.com/MystiAnne/Samples
Interested in Write the Docs? Learn more at https://www.writethedocs.org/index.html

Where to find Elisabeth and Curious Duck:
Elisabeth's Linkedin ➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/testobsessed/
Curious Duck's Linkedin ➡️  https://www.linkedin.com/company/curiousduck
Curious Duck's Website ➡️ https://curiousduck.io/
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CHAPTERS
0:00 Introducing Mysti Berry
0:57 How Tech Writing Has Changed
2:48 Full Circle: Using Developer Tools Again
4:28 DITA vs. Markdown
6:06 Partnering With Non-Writers
10:09 What Tech Leaders Get Wrong About Writers
14:38 AI in Tech Writing
20:26 What AI Still Can't Replace
21:33 "Adverbs Are the Liars of English"
24:06 How to Simplify Documentation
30:07 The Link Nobody Clicks
32:18 What the Research Actually Showed
36:09 How to Measure Docs Properly
39:08 Tech Writing & Fiction: The Common Threads
43:14 Where to Find Mysti
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Видео What AI Gets Wrong About Technical Writing - Elisabeth Hendrickson & Mysti Berry канала Elisabeth Hendrickson