I think what strikes me most about the technical and professional writing is how much time and effort goes into professional documents. I'm looking through a benefits summary for my employee insurance packet. It contains the phrase "Member Co-Payments do not accumulate towards the Out-of-pocket Maximum."

Someone, more likely several someones, thought about that sentence. They spent hours trying to come up with the clearest, simplest way of saying that your copays don't count towards how much you've put out during the year. And then, they had to run it past the lawyers, to make sure there was no liability potential in the phrase.

Further than that, though. Think about Google. I am dead certain that there is at least one person who works there whose only job is to think about that one word. About how it can be improved, in whatever sense, about how that logo, that millions of people see every minute of every day, can be changed. And changed in a way that improves their image without diluting it.

That person knows that logo. Knows every pixel. Thinks about it while on vacation. Sees it burning in the night behind eyelids closed in sleep. All that effort, just to extract the maximum possible value out of six letters.

If you want some idea of how hard this is to do, try this writing exercise. Your task is to write a story with exactly fifty words. It must have a beginning, middle and end. It must be a valid story. And it cannot have any more or less than fifty words. Now do that every day, for a paycheck. Tell me that's not hard work.