Roslyn Petelin

Challenges in collaborative writing in the contemporary corporation

Collaborative writing is pervasive in the contemporary corporate workplace. North American research reports that nine out of ten business professionals produce some of their documents as part of a team. As workplace writers seek to meet the business goals of their employers, and further their own careers, they require sophisticated skills in joining with other writers to collaboratively produce documents. Taking advantage of the benefits, and meeting the challenges of this demand, requires corporate and academic communities to collaborate: to address gaps in the knowledge about collaborative writing and to train and develop competent collaborative writers.

Considering plain language: issues and initiatives

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on plain language in Australia, the UK and the USA since the movement began to accelerate in the early 1960s; to review the progress of plain‐language initiatives in those countries in the years since then; to provide guidance on generating plain‐language documents for writers in the corporate arena; and to present suggestions for further research.Design/methodology/approach – The paper discusses historical and contemporary initiatives and issues relating to plain language, presents guidelines for writing in plain language, and discusses the desirability of ongoing research.Findings – The paper concludes with suggestions for further research in the corporate sector, where issues such as plain‐language “standards” are contestable, and compliance with plain‐language guidelines is under‐researched.Research limitations/implications – Although the plain‐language movement has gained great momentum worldwide in recent years, this paper is limited to...

Managing organisational writing to enhance corporate credibility

Many employees neither trained as “career writers” nor defining themselves as writers spend a major part of their time writing because, undeniably, writing is a central activity in organisations. To produce the high quality required to create and maintain credibility, organisations need to have professionals who can efficiently produce documents with substance, structure and style. This paper discusses issues relating to the management of corporate writing and editing, and presents practices and processes that managers can implement in their organisations to produce flawless documents, thereby avoiding the credibility crises that occur when writing is not taken seriously.

The Australian Journal of Communication (1976–2013): Tracing the Trajectory

This paper traces the trajectory of a scholarly journal that was first published in 1976 and has been continuously published since then. The paper discusses the founding of the journal, its history, the responsibilities of an editor, and the international contribution of the journal to the field of Communication internationally.