Winter 2025

A Technical Communicator Christmas

Dawn Stevens, Comtech Services

It’s that time of year again for a retelling of a classic Christmas story, repurposed to highlight some aspect of technical communication and show the importance of our craft in bringing joy to our customers, not just at this season, but all year round. This year, I turn to A Charlie Brown Christmas, which first aired in 1965. Based on the Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schultz, the special aired for 56 years on broadcast television until AppleTV+ obtained exclusive rights. Although I don’t remember the first few years (being an infant!), I am sure I watched it every year for all 56 years it was readily shown as my dad was a huge Peanuts fan, and it became a tradition even after I left home.

I’ve avoided rewriting this classic for some time, feeling somewhat sacrilegious turning Linus’s retelling of the Christmas story into an exhortation of structured authoring. So I ask your forgiveness as you hopefully enjoy my brief retelling (leaving out a lot of subplots). Wishing you and yours a joyous holiday season.
-Dawn

(P.S. For a bonus retelling, please be sure to check out the letters to the editor section of this newsletter for a rewrite of a famous letter and its answer first published in The New York Sun in 1897.)

A Technical Communicator Christmas

It’s December in the office, and deadlines loom. The team is bustling to get the new product documentation finished before release.

Charlie Brown, the misunderstood technical communicator, sighs at his desk.
“I just don’t understand structured authoring. Everyone else makes it look so easy, but when I try to use it, I feel like I’m doing everything wrong.”

Meanwhile, Snoopy, the shiny new AI tool, is showing off—auto-suggesting content, generating drafts, and pulling snippets from repositories. Everyone gathers around to admire, while Charlie Brown feels more and more left behind.
“Good grief. Even the AI writes better than I do,” he mutters.

Lucy, the ever-determined project manager, sets up her “ContentOps Help Desk” (for five cents, of course).
“Charlie Brown, stop worrying and just get the docs out the door. We don’t have time for you to fuss about structure. The release clock is ticking!”

Overwhelmed, Charlie Brown stares at the blinking cursor, unsure if his work will ever matter in this new world of automation and operations.

That’s when Linus, the calm and wise consultant, steps in.
“Charlie Brown, you’re forgetting what this is all about. Structured authoring isn’t here to make you feel small—it’s here to make your words travel further. Metadata, reuse, workflows… these things aren’t about replacing you. They’re about supporting you, so your content can reach every user who needs it.”

Linus picks up a lonely, untagged topic file—the kind no one wanted to touch—and shows Charlie Brown how to enrich it with structure. Suddenly, the file shines: reusable, findable, ready for delivery across channels.

Charlie Brown’s eyes brighten. “So…it’s not about replacing writers. It’s about making writing stronger.”

With renewed confidence, Charlie Brown joins Snoopy, Lucy, and Linus at the workstation. Together they transform the documentation, and the whole team gathers around the “tree” of content—once bare, now thriving with structure, taxonomy, and clear messaging.

And for the first time, Charlie Brown smiles:
“I guess even a technical communicator can find their place in ContentOps.”

Dear Editor,

I am a technical writer. Some of my teammates say there is no real use for AI in our field. They say it is just a gimmick and cannot help with serious documentation.

Please tell me the truth: Is there a use for AI in technical writing?

Sincerely,
Virginia, A Curious Technical Writer

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Use for AI

Virginia, your colleagues are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of an age that doubts what it cannot instantly measure. They think that AI is nothing more than a toy for programmers, or a passing fad. They believe only in what they can index, edit, or publish in a CMS.

Yes, Virginia, there is a use for AI. It exists as surely as style guides, version control, and the need for clear communication exist. AI brings structure to chaos, drafts to completion, and rough thoughts into refined sentences. It can analyze terminology, suggest consistency, and even generate that first draft when you are staring at the empty screen.

No AI? Then what would become of rapid authoring, smart reuse, or adaptive content? The world would be slower, flatter, and far less scalable.

AI exists to help you—not to replace your judgment, your empathy for users, or your insistence on accuracy. It cannot feel the satisfaction of a well-crafted sentence, nor can it replace the human clarity that only a technical communicator provides. But it can augment your craft, remove the drudgery, and give you more time for the work that truly matters.

Therefore, Virginia, AI will continue to exist, as surely as collaboration, creativity, and the need for human understanding endure. A thousand years from now, nay ten thousand, it will still be helping writers bridge the gap between technology and people.

Yes, Technical Writer, there is a use for AI.

About the Author:

Dawn Stevens is CIDM’s Director and President of Comtech Services. She has over 30 years of practical experience in virtually every role within a documentation and training department including project management, instructional design, writing, editing, and multimedia programming.