what we think we know about writing in the professional world

TORDA'S SPRING 2021 TEACHING

what we think we know about writing in the professional world

9/12/2017

Consider the in-class activity that started our class together. Consider the wide array of documents that we looked at; consider the brief discussion we had about various qualities of professional writing.

Consider, as well, the reading from Markel that you needed to read for Wednesday's online class (you can read that material here).

PART I. Once you've thought about it, please post a response to this question: Based on the reading and our class discussion from class, what do you think are the important things to know about writing in professional settings? AND How is it like/not like the writing you do in school? What might transfer from school writing to professional writing? What probably won't? FINALLY, what do you imagine will be hard to learn, this semester, about writing in the professions?

In order to post, you simply need to follow the instructions to " leave a reply" . Please post between 200 and 500 words.

PART II. Please read your colleagues posts. Select one or two to reply to. Please reply with a post of 100 to 250 words. To respond to a post, simply hit the "comments" button that appears both below the post and in the upper right corner of the page the post appears on and follow the instructions as prompted.

We'll use this information to shape the rest of our semester together, testing what we learn as we go against what we thought we knew.

PLEASE POST PART I NO LATER THAN 5:00 ON SATURDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2017.
PLEASE POST PART II NO LATER THAN 5:00 ON TUESDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2017.

20 Comments

Walid Bechara

9/13/2017 06:36:48 pm

Walid Bechara
Prof. Torda
ENL 202
9/13/17
Two of the important things to remember when looking at professional writing are purpose and audience. If you notice, the two purposes for communicating technical information is to “Help others learn about the subject, carry out a task, or make a decision” and “to reinforce or change attitudes and motivate readers to take action”. In these types of writings, you see immediately who the writers are targeting for an audience and why they are taking the time to reach out, or in other words, their purpose. If the attempts are to make a convincing argument to gather the masses, then you must heavily consider who it is that you are communicating the information to and what points you need to cover to keep readers informed. If the point is to persuade Economists to invest in your business idea, then as a professional writer you need to be able to determine what information it is that will pitch your business plan effectively. It would also be important to understand who the investors are and what they would find intriguing. The better the understanding you have of your audience’s wants, the better you can choose your wording in hopes to persuade those necessary. The writing that one must produce in school can differ and be like that of professional writing.
When producing writing in school, the goal is to cover what the assignment’s criteria requires. Sometimes the goal of the writing can be to provide an argument that convinces readers to feel how you feel about a topic. This can be described as Rhetorical Writing. This type of writing will offer many similarities between school and professional compositions. In all other cases, school writing will consist of the audience being the instructor and the goal would be to achieve the best possible grade. Professional writing differs in that most of the audience will depend on what is being communicated and for what purpose. Chances are, if you are asked to present a point that you personally feel strongly about and are asked for an explanation, then it could serve a feasible use in the professional world. Writing professionally has already had me wondering what more I could gain from this style of communication.
While I may run into the issue of determining what is and what is not a professional writing, I think that feeling will soon disappear as I inform myself of some of the rules. I feel as though I just need to familiarize myself with some of the different forms that professional writing can come in. Bettering my understanding of the audience and how to communicate what I need to say will be the focus of my efforts in learning the forms of professional writing.

9/14/2017 07:35:01 am

This is smart work. Audience and Purpose are at the forefront of every writer's mind. It's most obvious in writing in the professional world, but, as you point out, that is essentially what you are doing in school writing too. It's just that the audience and the purpose are just much more focused: one teacher and one purpose--to get a good grade. But it can be useful to see how what it means to get a good grade is that you are essentially convincing your teacher that you've done the things she's wanted you to do to her satisfaction.

Suzanne Chetwynd

9/14/2017 04:58:09 pm

College Writing versus Professional Writing

Based on the reading and our class discussion from class, what do you think are the important things to know about writing in professional settings?

Audience – Knowing the audience you are writing for is very important! This includes the language your audience speaks, the level of understanding of your topic (in some cases, use laymen terms), and the purpose of your writing.

Honesty and Accuracy – These characteristics also go hand in hand when addressing your audience. Doing the research to obtain your facts shows that you took the time to not only to honestly layout the facts, but that you have also proven the accuracy of your statements.

Professional Appearance – Having an attractive document invites your audience to pick up the document. Keeping it neat and clean with bold headings, pleasing colors, and limiting the amount of text to the important issues will more likely cause your audience to read the document.

Clarity and Comprehensiveness – These two characteristics of professional writing will further gain the attention of your audience. If the writing is easy to understand and gives a background on the topic at hand, the audience will be able to make their own opinions or agree with your purpose.

AND How is it like/not like the writing you do in school?
It is very similar to the writing that we do in school in that all writing requires research. Whether you’re writing an interpretation of a short story, a blog on the latest technology, or global warming in the Arctic, you must be informed to do so. Research is key.
The only characteristic that is unlike professional writing is that it lacks creativity and is more technical. You can be creative with the delivery, but the facts and how you convey them to your audience are much more important.

What might transfer from school writing to professional writing? What probably won't?
I think this goes back to the previous question. Learning effective research, proofreading, and appearance will transfer from school writing, but flowery language may not.

FINALLY, what do you imagine will be hard to learn, this semester, about writing in the professions?
I think the most difficult part of professional writing would be what venue to use. There are so many ways to convey a message. Whether it be in video form, a pamphlet, company-wide email, or a meeting using PowerPoint, choosing one that will be most effective is something I’m interested in learning.

Eso Kim

9/15/2017 03:03:17 pm

I think you already did a professional composition here since you delievered a lot of information economically by categorizing.
I agree with your opinion that proofreading and effective research could be transferred from normal school writings. But I couldn't come up with the idea that 'flowery language' might not be transferred and I think that's a good point.

Suzanne Chetwynd

9/18/2017 02:21:14 pm

Thank you Eso for your feedback. What I meant by "flowery language" is using more of a creative writing where you use adjectives that are more colorful and express feeling. In technical writing, in my opinion, it's more factual. I hope that helps.

9/20/2017 01:07:29 pm

I agree with you Eso. This is a very good example (almost exactly) of what a top five document will look like. I particularly liked here how the writer connected the work we do in school to the work we do in the world. The research might look different, but it is still research.

Tong Wu

9/17/2017 10:47:17 am

Thank you for conveying those convictive ideas in such an organized format.I totally agree with your opinion that clarity and comprehensiveness those two important characteritics will further gain the attention of audience,which was neglected in my composition.In professional writings,it is significant to include all the useful information that audience will need,so it is difficult to develop a comprehensive writing which expresses the ideas clearly and distinctly.
I also go along with your opinion that both academic writing and professtional writing need research,it is necessary to hold enough background information before developing any type of writing.But I am a little confused about ''can be creative with the delivery''.And I think that professional writing is more technical than school writing because the previous one needs to be more specialized on account of the purpose of technical communication which is to motivate audience to change their attitudes and take some action.
Thanks for sharing your ideas from which I learned a lot.

Suzanne Chetwynd

9/18/2017 02:29:32 pm

Thanks for your response Tong! What I meant by being creative with the delivery is just what your post conveyed. Professional writing, in my opinion is factual for the most part because we're trying to convey a message. But, it can be delivered with creativity (colorful pamphlets, attractive websites, or clear documents) by attracting the audience so they actually want to read our facts.

Savannah Eastman

9/19/2017 12:44:56 pm

I really like the way you broke down each part of the writing for what you find important. The way you explained it in your response made it clear cut and easy to the reader to understand and over all it was a good summary of the article. I definitely agree with you that when it comes to writing for this class, it is going to be difficult to decipher which format of writing we are supposed to be using. Good job .

Jiayi ZHAI

9/14/2017 06:23:18 pm

Based on the reading and our class discussion from class, what do you think are the important things to know about writing in professional settings?
First, who will read the professional writing should be taken into consideration. That will involve we should use simple language or complicated one. For example, Katrina is written to some experts or scientists studying tsunamis and some other disasters and the words in it are advanced and the sentences are compound and complicated. However, the flyer related to club information will be read by college student for involvement, so the language is easy and light-hearted. What’s more, whether we should write details is determined by the audience. Now we are going to write an article about dogs. If the audience are little children and we should write some overview and abstract about dogs. But if it will be used to publish a paper, more deep and obscure knowledge should be written.
Second, what is the purpose of the professional writing? Every professional article is expected to solve problems or give instructions. We should put collaborative and related information in the writing to meet audience’s expectation. Only effective information will produce useful professional writing.
Third, the content should be accurate and clear. Writers should be responsible for the articles they wrote. Even if some small numbers of the date are incorrect, audience will suspect the whole writing. And if the false content do harm to some people or some institutions, we will face serious legal charges. We should tell the truth and try to give readers correct instructions.

AND How is it like/not like the writing you do in school?
The writings we do in school is one kind of professional writing. They are called essay or paper. They are written for professor to some degree to show we understand or master some certain knowledge. But professional writing is a collection of the writings related to many kinds of fields and used for multiple purposes. And every kind of professional writing has its unique method and format.

What might transfer from school writing to professional writing?
Accuracy and clarity can be transferred. Either essay or other kinds of writings need writers telling the truth and ensure the content comprising correct information. Writers should be always responsible to what they showed to others.
Do the research before beginning writing. We should look up many related paper and reference before we begin to write our essay. It is the same when we writing blog, notice and reports. In the example given in the chapter one. The IT supervisor should talk with people related to find out how complicated situation it is and many concerns should be taken into account. He also should do some market research to figure out there is problem with the IT infrastructure of the company before writing the report to the executive.

What probably won't?
The purpose is not the same as other professional writing. Different audience has different expectation and demand of the professional writing, so we should not make them in the same way.
The format and style cannot be used in other professional writing. It is fixed when we write a essay, but faced to professional writings, the style should be flexible and various.

FINALLY, what do you imagine will be hard to learn, this semester, about writing in the professions?
Reading is dense.
Understanding the knowledge in class is difficult.
There are different writing skills in different kinds of professional writing. Remembering the skills and taking them into effect need lots of time and many times of practice.
Mastering a foreign language and writing professional articles with the foreign language is difficult for me.
I have little patience to revise my article. It is one of the reason I cannot improve my writing skills.

Tong Wu

9/17/2017 11:08:21 am

Thanks for showing us your clear and specific comprehension about professional writing. I have the same reation with you that audience and purpose are the most important characteristics of technical writing.Because all other factors are based on who will read the document and what is the document for in professional writing.
But what I feel puzzled is that the school writing is categorized into a kind of professional writing.According to the reading material,technical writing is aimed to persuade audience to reinforce or change their attitude and then take aome action after reading the document.Our academic writing is used to express our feeling and show our knowledge about what we have already learn, which the instrutor will grade.So I think it is a little different from professinal writing.
I also have emotional response to your feeling about the class this semester.I have the same difficulty and I hope we can get it over together! Thanks for your great ideas!

Eso Kim

9/19/2017 04:55:46 pm

Hi Jiayi!
I read through your answers. I think the contents are specific and helpful enough to understand what a professional composition is.
I agree that "accuracy and clarity can be transferred" from school writing to professional writing. (Here I figured out that I misunderstood the question. I thought the question was asking which features of professional writing could be transferred to academic writing. I think I totally reversed myself. Anyway, my point is similiar as yours.) Perhaps academic writing we did at schools is the basic type of professional writing. So both share some characteristics in common, like clarity and accuarcy.
As you mentioned in my reply, your concerns are similiar to mine. I hope we can overcome the weaknesses that each of us have through the semester.

Tong Wu

9/14/2017 07:32:14 pm

Tong Wu
Prof.Torda
ENGL 202
After reading the material about technical communication and considering our discussion from class, the most important things of writing in professional settings, from my perspective, are purpose, audience, and the construction of a product in professional writing.
Before starting any types of writing, you should think what the requests are and what can you do to make your task well-suited for the criteria mentioned before.That is the purpose. In retrospect, the wide array of documents we looked at in class had different purposes: the workbook for teachers were used to inform those who prepared for a seminar and provide a schedule for them to follow along; the brochure of BSU was to remind students of the significant events on campus. It has something in common with the technical information people communicate in the working world: to help others learn about a subject,carry out a task, or make a decision and to reinforce or change attitudes and motivate readers to take action. That is to say, you should make readers have something to do according to your description and portrait.
One of the challenges of producing technical communication is to begin by considering audience-related factors, so does professional writing. Knowing who the readers are,what they understand about the subject,what is their background and how they will use the writing will help you decide what kind of document to write, how to structure it and what kind of style and design to use.If you do so, the document you complete will make things different.
Based on purpose-related and audience-relevant factors, the construction is also one of the most important characteristics but the most difficult one in professional writing. Under reading correlative materials and doing researches, writers are supposed to pick up useful resources and integrate them to complete the whole passage with correct format and well-ordered structure.The more carefully you think through your options, the better able you will be to use your resources wisely and make a document that will get the job done.
Comparing with the writing we do in college, to analyze a problem, find and evaluate evidence and draw conclusions---these are the same skills and processes we use when we design our professional writing.However,the obvious difference is, in academic writing what we only should do is to focus on the assignment itself and show our harvest about feelings according to what we learned at the end of a course or the end of a chapter. On the contrary, when it comes to professional writing, as mentioned above our purpose will likely be to reinforce or change readers’ attitudes and to motivate them to take particular actions or to help them carry out their own work-related tasks.In terms of this kind of writing, things may come to be more difficult to finish than getting an ‘‘A’’ in school writing.
Concerning about the writing in the professions this semester, how to promote our technical skills to arrange an exact professional writing may be the biggest challenge for me.How to design the whole passage in order to make the meaning easy to learn, how to express the thesis statement with the support of graphics come out of researches and how to meet the need of audience, all these challenges are visible and need to be promoted.

Eso Kim

9/15/2017 02:54:03 pm

Based on the reading and our class discussion from class, what do you think are the important things to know about writing in professional settings?
- Since audience, purpose, and format are the biggest differences between academic composition and professional writings, we should consider audience-related factors, purpose related factors, and document-related factors before writing. We should consider who will be our aimed audience so as to limit the details or not and to choose which languages we are going to use. Before wiriting, we have to determine the exact purpose and select an appropriate format. Technical communication includes a large range of communicating forms, including written documents, oral presentations and even online forms such as facebook page, tweet, and etc. When writing in professional settings, we should keep in mind that it must tell the truth not to mislead the reader. It should be clear and contain objective and unbiased information. Proper technical writing provides all the information that readers might need. If necessary, it would be helpful if it describes backgrounds of the information. The document would be accessible if it is divided into sections and each part can be easily found because not every person needs to read the whole document. It should not have grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, mechanical errors, and etc. Incorrect words and usage would make the document look unprofessional. In addition, the document itself should look neat and professional to give positive impression to readers. Finally, a good technical writing should convey all these information economically. In another word, the more concise it is, the better.

How is it like/not like the writing you do in school?
-There are two big differences between technical (professional) writing and academic writing such as school assignments; audience and purpose. Usually, an aimed reader of normal academic writing might be an instructor who will grade it. And its purpose is just to show the instructor that a writer created new knowledge rather than motivate him/her to take particular actions. On the other hand, audience for technical writing might be a lot larger, including peers, supervisors, and people from other companies. Also, purpose of technical writing is more various than academic writing. To simplify, we write in professional settings to help readers learn about a subject or make a decision, to give a guideline, to reinforce or change attitudes and to motivate readers to take action.

What might transfer from school writing to professional writing? What probably won't?
-Various formats and styles of communications cannot be adjusted to normal academic compositions. The audience and purpose of academic writing differs from professional writings in most situations. However, I think honesty and clarity can be transferred. In any writings, it is important to write clearly so that it shows the writer’s perspective obviously and write based on true facts not to mislead readers. The difference here might be that if honesty is not observed in professional writing, as an example from the textbook said, the writer may take legal responsibility. On the other hand, it won’t cause a serious problem for an academic writing assignment. Also, academic writing documents would get better grade if it has professional appearance and has not much errors. So such criteria of well-written professional compositions could be transferred but optionally, except the styles of format.

What do you imagine will be hard to learn, this semester, about writing in the professions?
-For me, the first thing would be correctness. As I am not a native English speaker and I am weak in grammar, I'm worried whether I can make my document look neat and professional. Also, I believe organizing the paragraphs efficiently and economically would be hard for me.
(Anyway, it's just a concern so I will do my best to keep up with the class!)

Jiayi ZHAI

9/16/2017 04:58:04 pm

Thank you coming up with the idea that writing economically is one of the most important criteria of professional writings. I realize my writings are always complicated and confusing. I will revise my writings and make them more concise and economical. I should clarify one concept or opinion straight and get to the point directly.
You talked about “two big differences between technical (professional) writing and academic writing” and exemplified the differences clearly.
I also agree that “Some criteria of well-written professional compositions could be transferred.” Well-developed writings share some common features, such as clarity, comprehensiveness, accuracy, audience-orientation and purpose –orientation and so on. We can try to improve our professional writings in such aspects.
The problems you came up with is the similar to some problems in my mind and we can overcome them together!

Suzanne Chetwynd

9/18/2017 02:39:29 pm

Hi Eso!
Great post! You made a great point on something I completely forgot about...one of the differences between writing academically and professionally is academically, our professor is our audience! She's the one that's going to determine if we have grasped the concepts she is teaching.

9/20/2017 01:10:11 pm

Yes. You are right. We forget that a piece of writing for a class has an audience--typically an audience of one. But if you do think of it that way, you see that most students--or at least successful students--do know their audience, they do study who that is. Because knowing what that one audience member wants is the difference between a good grade and a not so good grade

Tracie Lavoie

9/16/2017 07:53:14 am

What do you think are the important things to know about writing in a professional setting?
I think that one of the most important things in professional writing is to know your audience. Who is your audience? What is the best way to communicate the information to them so that they receive, understand and accept the information. I also think that it is important for the content of the writing to be factual, direct and to the point.

How is it like or not like the writing you do in school?
My professional writing is different from the way my school writing in that my professional writing is usually directed to multiple people oppose to just one. In my school writing I am trying to show my professor how much I know, how much I have learned from them. In my professional writing I am usually stating this is what I know and it is important that you need to know this.

What might or might not transfer from school writing to professional writing?
I think that one of the things that does not transfer from school writing to professional writing is my personal opinion. I think that in school writing, I am more willing to add my opinion in my school writing. My writing is more relaxed. I feel that my professional writing is always strictly professional.

What do you imagine will be hard to learn, this semester, about writing in the professions?
I think that the hardest thing to learn this semester about writing in the professions is unlearning what I know. I think that because I have been with the same company for over 20 years, that the bad writing habits that I have developed over the years may be hard to break.

Jiayi ZHAI

9/16/2017 04:39:40 pm

I totally agree that audience is one of the most important elements we should take into consideration when we prepare any kind of professional writing. Writing should serve readers. To handle the problem in readers’ minds and offer some informative messages aimed at certain audience are essential to professional writing.
Thanks for coming up with the idea that the purpose of other kinds of professional writing is multiple. It is a concise and clear feature which can help us to distinguish school essays from other professional writings.
But I am a little confused about whether we should not put our personal view in other professional writings. The purpose of any writings is to convey our own viewpoint. If we fail to pass our own view to audience, it may not be accurate and believable. Also, our views can be formal and serious. We can use formal and serious style and language to output our views.
When I considered the difficult of writing professional writing in this semester, I just thought about the difficult non-native speakers will face, but I ignore that native speakers will be constrained by past writing habits. Thank you for coming up with this opinion.

Chelsea Thornton

9/17/2017 01:40:00 pm

There are a number of important aspects to remember when writing in a professional setting. Chapter one in Markel highlights the important qualities to maintain for professional writing, they are as follows: honesty, willing to learn, display emotional intelligence, generous, monitor the best information, be self-disciplined, and prioritize/respond quickly. These are highly effective qualities to maintain because they will help show readers that the document is not written by an amateur, or someone who does not truly know what they are writing about. Markel also lists the measurements of excellence in technical documents: honesty, clarity, accuracy, comprehensiveness, accessibility, conciseness, professional appearance, and correctness. When combining these two lists together, a writer will have no problem efficiently creating a professional technical document.

Professional writing can be similar to the writing done in school when referencing research assignments. If a research paper done by a student is done correctly, then it will be written with most of the characteristics in Markel that are referenced above. There will also be proper documentation and citation. However, that is not true for all school assignments. There are many instances where the writing is not professional, and lacks a great number of the characteristics from Markel. This could be because of the context of the assignment, or the writer themselves.

I believe that the most important process that will transfer from school to professional writing would be the skill for proper citations. That is important no matter what type of writing is happening, because if it is not done properly, then people run into the problem of plagiarism.

I have taken two other courses that highlighted the importance of professional writing, and I hope that I have retained the knowledge I got from those courses, and can use them properly in this class as well. I am not sure what I will struggle with, but I am sure there will be something. Bring it on.

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