Association for Teachers of Technical Writing 1

(A note of explanation: The Association for Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) is an emailing list that I subscribe to to better my understanding of what professional writers do. The posts titled ATTW are about the emails I receive.)


The first message talked about looking for an editor for a quarterly journal. I realized how much work is involved in doing something so major as editing a journal. You must have a team working with you - in this case, the institution you are working for- and also you need to have people to support you, an “editorial team” as the article suggests. I have often wanted to become an editor of something someday and this opened my eyes a little more to all the work that must be put forth to get to such a position. Not only must you have abundant experience and professional writing skills, but also you must have a team working for you to make something like this possible.

The second message discussed writing about and for gaming industries. This is probably something I have never thought through before...someone, somewhere has to write video games? Clearly, I have never spent much time at the sport, but from what I have seen, they are very complex! Professional writing really is in so many different places. Whatever your interests may be, you could probably find a job writing about them.

The third message talked about the Association for Business Communication. It is something similar to the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing and they are encouraged to join it. Since we have recently been working on cover letters and resumes in class, I noticed that this email was similar in ways; it was trying to convince the readers that this association and membership was worth the cost and time to read.