ITauthor

Graham pointed out this scandalous slight on our profession:

Whenever I'm asked I usually say: "I work for a software company".

This is pretty much as good as conversation stopper as the above but it has the benefit of not building you up for a fall. If I say: "I'm a technical writer" or worse still: "I'm a technical author", the other person doesn't have a clue what I'm on about but they do catch the word "writer" or "author" which sounds quite interesting and they hopefully ask me to elaborate. This just leads to disappointment and antagonism, as if my first reply had been a deliberate trick to fool them into thinking their line of questioning could have led to an interesting conversation.

I always thought "wheel tapper" sounded an intriguing job.