Technical and Professional Writing Commons^™

Ensleyedits: Creating A Style Resource For Professional Writers, Ensley Fraschillo

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This capstone explores the creation of a resource that helps professional writers keep up with ever-changing style practices and understand the implications of different stylistic and mechanical choices. Examining the history of style guides, analyzing the content of existing style references through the lens of prescriptivism and descriptivism, and assessing the gaps of current online style resources demonstrate how a new online style resource hosted on Instagram, EnsleyEdits, can meet this need for professional writers. Research on current social media, accessibility, and design practices demonstrate how content on the EnsleyEdits account can succeed on Instagram, and the results of …

Finding Their Chrysanthemum: Linguistic Representation In Children's Literature, Marielena Zajac

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Children in America today struggle with finding themselves in the books they read due to societal expectations. From an early age, children are dictated on the correct way to speak and write in “American,” which can leave children and their home languages feeling unseen and dismissed. To help further the conversation and promotion of linguistic diversity in American society, this capstone analyzes dialectal representation in children’s books, with a heavy focus on attitudinal linguistic principles rather than prescriptive mechanics. The secondary research explores current literature and resources that discuss literacy acquisition in adolescents, trends in dialects in America, and childhood …

Remote Working During The Pandemic: Mapw Graduates In The Workforce, Jordan Dollar

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

From early 2020 to 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of employers across the globe to abruptly shift to virtual workspaces to both facilitate safe work environments and offset operational costs in a time of economic uncertainty. This sudden change accelerated the already growing trend of remote working in a rapid fashion and, for many, signaled the start of a new era of professional operations. As one could imagine, this also created a myriad of anxiety and stress for those workers unprepared for the change. Existing research suggests that this change was especially impactful for Generation Z and Generation Y …

Video For All: An Argument Towards Standardization Of Video Production Practices And Research, Kelley Bostian

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Instructional videos, a subset of video pedagogy, are becoming valuable pedagogical tools for instructors within both higher education and professional writing environments. By researching contemporary academic literature and creating video artifacts that put theory into practice, this capstone project answers three important questions: 1) How could video pedagogy shift student attitudes or engagement with course content in digital learning environments? 2) What benefits and limitations of standardizing and researching video pedagogy are valuable for educators interested in creating video to understand, including educators with limited or no video production experience? 3) In what ways could certain production techniques in video …

Writing As A Nonprofit Leadership Tool, Samantha Weinberg

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

When writers use their skills towards a nonprofit’s mission, they can help enhance communities and change lives. There are roles in the nonprofit sector that are very writing centric, such as grant writers and communication specialists, that writers commonly hold. However, writing is also a necessary skill for those in management or leadership positions in nonprofit organizations. This capstone project explores the kinds of writing skills and deliverables that are critical to the responsibilities of nonprofit managers and how writing impacts the effectiveness of nonprofit managers and organizations.

Community Engagement In Writing Programs: Preparing Students For Success In Professional Settings, Courtney Bradford

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This practicum focused on looking into the history of the foster care system, its development, and its modern iteration and on working with a nonprofit that supports the foster care system. The internship with Advocates for Children in Cartersville, Georgia, provided primary research into (1) how work on community-based engagement projects prepared me to explore careers in the nonprofit sector, (2) what kinds of writing, research, and other deliverables are needed by nonprofits supporting the foster care system and how the MAPW program prepared me to produce those deliverables, and (3) how having a strong understanding of the history and …

Thinking Outside The Toolbox: A Teaching Resource For Vocational Writing, Dustin Ledford

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This capstone project combines elements of contextualization, professional writing, and process pedagogy to create a course design for teaching writing in the technical college/vocational school setting. With this course design, students are asked to complete a variety of scenario-driven, workplace-related writing tasks that teach fundamentals of college composition including research, critical thinking, and process-based writing. With this sample curriculum, students write from realistic scenarios from the healthcare industry, especially tasks from the medical office environment. The goal of this course design is to model and promote new practices for teaching writing in vocational settings to better engage students in these …

Reflecting On And Shattering My White Lens: A Critical Autoethnography On My Experience As A White Editor Working With Authors Of Color, Kelsey Medlin

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This critical autoethnography aims to reveal how the cultural biases of a white majority industry impact the stories they select for acquisition and how they are edited. As an editor, I came to this topic from my personal desire to see if my own whiteness affects the way I view writers of color, their stories, and the audience that the companies market to. Thus, the purpose of this project is to explore the current conversations on the topic of diversity within the publishing industry and whether the conversation is making a connection between the lack of diversity in the workforce …

Adventures In Storytelling: An Editor's Guide To Better Fiction, Rachel Frank

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Writing fiction can be daunting for beginning writers. This graphic guide seeks to make fiction more accessible, using the unique affordances of the graphic medium to explain fictional concepts and techniques in a clear, engaging way.

The Biography Of Dr. Joseph Mbelolo Ya Mpiku: A Congolese True To His Roots, Looking Beyond The World He Lives In., Zola Matingu

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This is the biography of Dr. Joseph Mbelolo Ya Mpiku, a Congolese man who has lived in three different countries, on three different continents, immersed in three different cultures. His life experiences enriched his knowledge of other cultures, and his own culture kept him grounded in his identity.

His story can be relatable to people from various cultures across generations, as culture is a key element of the way an individual sees and defines himself. A culture doesn't just benefit those from where it originated; it can be shared to enrich the human experience, not just in the differences, but …

Creating Effective Style Documents: A Practicum In Trade Publication, Kristen Tardio

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

It is no secret that the field of publication thrives on collaboration: among publishers, editorial and production team members, designers, marketing and publicity staff, sales representatives and promoters, authors, illustrators, reviewers, and, of course, readers. However, an equally important yet less-explored relationship exists within this industry, between publishing staff and a text itself. As such, despite this crucial connection, the technical means by which the final product is created may also be overlooked.

This practicum examines these technical resources: style guides/sheets (especially for house style), their creation, and their usage in publishing, specifically how they pertain to sales material. Also …

Creating A Web Presence For A Small Business Using A Holistic Content Strategy Approach, Tabitha Akins

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Creating a Web Presence for a Small Business Using a Holistic Content Strategy Approach details the content strategy process used and work done to revise a small business website, in order to better meet the content needs of both the business and its customers.