Overview

Collaborative writing, group writing, team writing, and distributed writing are all terms used interchangeably to describe what it generally means to perform collective writing in a professional atmosphere. For our purposes, however, we will refer to the act of writing together as collaborative writing. Collaborative writing entails the collective efforts of a group of people who work together on a written project. The main goal of collaborative writing is to produce the best work for the good of the company or organization by including the ideas and skill sets of multiple writers.

Collaboration involves a mindset that sees the whole as more important than its parts. In other words, when people decide to collaborate, they are deciding to set aside their individual goals for the good of the group or company they represent. Collaboration seeks to combine multiple skill sets, knowledge bases, ideas and engagement from a number of people for the sole purpose of accomplishing a goal that benefits all, regardless of position or title. A collaborative mindset is focused on company success more than individual success.

Collaborative writing is writing that entails the collaborative efforts of a group of people who gather together to write documentation, produce images, provide subtext, and more in an effort to bring a project to completion. Members can work in spaces that are face-to-face or virtual. The main goal of collaborative writing is to produce the best work for the good of the company by including the ideas and skill sets of multiple authors.