This assignment is crucial to any technical writing student in the graduate program. Drawing definitions from within Central Works in Technical Communication, prominent voices include: Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart Selber, Slack, Miller, and Doak, Russell Rutter, and Carolyn Miller. This paper helped me narrow my definition of what it means to be a technical writer and how technical writers came to be. Up until this class, I hadn’t specifically thought about what being a technical writer entails, though I think it’s important to understand our identity as technical writers and technical communicators.  

          It’s tricky to pin down a singular definition of technical writing because of how often it has shifted and morphed throughout history as such a highly adaptable profession; though I think it’s important to pinpoint the shifts that the definition has gone through over the years.  

For this group project, I focused on editing the document for grammar, punctuation, and readability. I used Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande as a reference for strong grammatical practices. The document was quite choppy when we began, so it was imperative that I helped the writing flow and suggest areas to implement more bulleted lists because there were several random paragraphs with long lists. 

          This group project was successful and a great working experience with my peers. Not only did I have the opportunity to work on my editing skills, but I had the chance to work on my collaboration efforts as well. It's important for technical writers to be able to work with a range of diverse peers and clients.

This is the completed collaborative project.