Partner: Michael Pham ~ his website

For this assignment, we composed a Wikipedia style entry about a topic relevant to this course. We were instructed to locate a Technical Communications textbook and check the index for interesting terms. Then we searched wikipedia for a subset of those terms that did not already have wikipedia entries. Out of those, we selected Compressed Writing as our topic.

The biggest challenge for this assignment wasn’t finding material to write about it, it was accommodating my partner’s writing style. I’m often tempted to completely rewrite entire reports to match my version of flow and word choice. In this case, I think I managed to restrain myself somewhat, and I’m content with the result.

I was debating whether to include the fictional writing example. I think I’m justified in doing so. The technical writing formulation of compression – make a passage shorter – can be applied to any genre. In addition, it indirectly differentiates chronological compression from this version.

I found it interesting how many literary techniques go by the name of compression. There’s analytical compression for syntax analysis, chronological compression, and this.