Small text, big effects: How a technical communicator used writing to influence design decisions in a software firm

This paper focuses on the work that technical communicators perform every day to help themselves and their work teams manage information. The paper conceptualizes this work as rhetorical memory work in order to emphasize its importance to processes of organizational invention and creativity. The paper reports data assembled from an observation session with a technical communicator as he composed software documentation and subsequently attended a team meeting, data excerpted from a six-month case study of a team of technical communicators. The analysis finds that the technical communicator performed important creative work for his organization through the medium of a simple reminder note, which he created to help himself remember talking points at a meeting.