Technical and Professional Writing Commons^™

A Word From The Writing Center (February 2018), Jennifer Wilson, Ms, Els

A Word From the Writing Team (Newsletter)

This issue includes:

• Tortured By Typos
• Punctuation 101
• Writing Cafe

Millennials Expect Less And More: Workplace Writing For Today's Workforce, Gina Weber

Technical Communication Capstone Course

As the makeup of a company’s workforce changes so must their internal practices. The newest members of the professional workplace belong to the so-called Millennial generation. While there have always been challenges when new generations enter the workforce research shows that this latest generation has brought with it more challenges than previous generations. This paper looks at what is so different about this generation, how it affects the workplace, and finally, how these unique qualities can best be incorporated in a company’s policy and procedure writing to better keep the attention of this new worker. Characteristics of the generations currently …

From Big Ag To Campus Cafeterias: Intersections Of Food-Supply Networks As Technical Communication Pedagogy, Jessie Lynn Richards, Joshua Lenart, David Sumner, Douglas Christensen

Faculty Publications

This article presents a pedagogical approach to teaching technical and professional writing with an eye toward cultivating awareness and generating informed research among undergraduate students about food production and its various, intricate networks between Big Ag and campus cafeterias. Our pedagogy, influenced by interdisciplinary content, is designed to teach students to differentiate between food processes—such as production versus distribution and consumption—by viewing these networks as communicative practices rather than as inevitable chains or simple functions of one another. Our approach encourages students to locate and analyze differences between interdependent, but seemingly disparate pathways and to make visible communicative intersections that …

Business Communication For Success - Gvsu Edition, Unnamed Author, Mark Schaub, Jenniffer Eckert, Anessa Fehsenfeld, Rhonda R. Hoffman, Adam Krusniak, Tami Mccoy, Rachel Jean Norman, Julian Toscano

Open Textbooks

About the GVSU Edition

This text is an adaption of Business Communication for Success, an open textbook produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing in 2015.

Chapters 9, 18, and 20 of Business Communication for Success: GVSU Edition were revised and rewritten by student authors in 2017, as part of a course in the Writing Department at Grand Valley State University. All other chapters retain the content and formatting of previous editions.

Note about the 2015 edition:

The edition produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing was itself adapted from a work …

Write Place At The Write Time: A Study Of How Writing Contexts Affect Rates Of Productivity And Perceptions Of Success In Creative Writing, Sydnie R. Long

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This research explores the writing contexts of a few creative writers in an effort to learn more about the habits and conditions with which creative writers prefer to work. My goal is to observe how different contexts affect the success or productivity a writer experiences. I will build my project off the central question, is there a correlation between writing contexts and success in writing? From there, I will divide the project into three subsections guided by four subquestions aiming to explore where and how writers write, and gain an insight to their views on what success and productivity mean …

On The Same Page: Theory, Practice & The Ela Common Core State Standards, Jessica Lauer

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This research sought to examine how writing was happening in high schools. States across the country, including Michigan, began implementing the Common Core State Standards in 2010. The standards place a heavy focus on informational texts particularly as a student reaches high school. The standards also suggest that writing should be a shared responsibility among teachers, acknowledging the importance of cross-disciplinary writing skills. Using a grounded theory approach to analyze the semi-structured interviews conducted with eight English teachers in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this research revealed a disconnect between theory and practice when it comes to how educational standards …

Yorba Times: Special Edition On Safety, Noah Asher Golden, Facundo Acevedo, Jesse Alonzo, Henessy Arana, Leslie Arriaga, Michelle Brait, Amy Chau, Ashley Diaz, Jeremiah Dille, Sierra Durand, Beberly Espinoza, Elora Estes, Lesley Fernandez, Darshan Gamma, Cassandra Garcia, Karla Garcia, Yasmin Garcia, Neko Gianquinto, Gisselle Gonzalez, Jacob Gonzales, Sakina Jaffery, Adrianna Herrera, Allie Hoch, Victoria Hulett, Anthony Jaimes, Leilani Lagunes, Sandra Loredo, Kate Markey, Joshua Marmolejo, Faith Martin, Melissa Medina, Layla Melendez, Dylan Moses, Michaela Moses, Brooklynn Payne, Michelle Perez, Brianna Quirarte, Ieleen Ramirez, Edwin Reyes, Jehu Sandoval, Jaqueline Ramirez, Jonathan Sanchez, Nathalie Sanchez, Christopher Santibanez, Kaylin Seeley, Genevieve Stothers, Miranda Valdez, Christopher Velasquez

Yorba-Chapman Writing Partnership Anthology of Journalistic Writing

During the Spring 2016 semester, Dr. Noah Asher Golden's Teaching of Writing K-12 students partnered with the Journalism class at Yorba Academy for the Arts. Through collaboration over a four-month period, Chapman's future teachers and Yorba's junior high journalists engaged a deep writing process to write a series of features, editorials, and news articles, all connected in some way to the overarching theme of safety. Thank you to Ms. Andrea Lopez, Ms. Tracy Knibb, and the Lloyd E. and Elisabeth H. Klein Family Foundation for supporting this project.

Sexy Technical Communication, Tamara Powell, Jonathan Arnett, Monique Logan, Cassandra Race, Tiffani Reardon

2016 Faculty Bookshelf

Sexy technical writing…we’ve got to be kidding, right? But no, we aren’t. Good technical writing is powerful and clear and gets the job done. It brings people together and solves problems. Good technical writing purrs and hums like that BMW you plan to be driving someday.What’s not sexy about that? On the other hand, poor technical writing skills may lead to a lifetime of asking people if they want fries with that…or worse, selling vacuum cleaners door to door. There’s no need to ask what’s not sexy about that!

WE – your textbook authors – are a team of dedicated …

Establishing A Department Wiki To Construct Knowledge And Community In A University Setting, Jasmine Chanel Williams

Theses and Dissertations

To navigate graduate school, students rely on a social network from instructors to peers, this network is not omnipresent. In a nontraditional university setting, synchronous physical meetings can disrupt social engagement. At a commuter campus like the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR), the Professional and Technical Writing (PTW) MA students need an accessible, online community enabling asynchronous collaboration to improve understanding of important theoretical concepts in rhetoric. The web 2.0 technology, wiki, is a knowledge management tool and social software that may aid students in understanding rhetoric. Because there is not currently a rhetoric wiki available, one must …

Decoding Quantitative Language, Steven Cosares, Evelyn Burg

Open Educational Resources

We all need some “quantitative literacy” in order to communicate effectively. This means being able to read, write or speak intelligently in a medium where some quantitative information is a part the discussion, proof, or argument. The readers of these materials are expected to have sufficient wherewithal to understand this language so as to draw appropriate conclusions. Developing this type of literacy requires practice. It means using everyday language to describe the ways in which quantities relate to one another.

Technical Illustration: The Changes And Challenges Presented By Advancements In Technology, Cindy Caudill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the changes and challenges technology has created in the field of technical illustration. Technical illustration includes the fields of technical drawing as well as scientific and medical illustration. Previously, technical illustrators learned and used traditional illustration methods, without the aid of computers. However, technology has rapidly entered the field and has changed the education, work environment, skills, and role of the technical illustrator. I note both the benefits and disadvantages that current technical illustrators are facing in their work. I explore both sides of the digital media and traditional art debate while focusing on the technical illustrator's …

College-(Writing) Ready: Aligning The Common Core State Standards With The Wpa Outcomes For First-Year Composition, Clancy Ratliff

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Seniors And Social Networking: A Class To Connect Family And Friends, Catherine A. Chatelain

Theses and Dissertations

One of the most important life stages that senior citizens experience is the need to share the legacy of their lives with others. While many senior citizens are able to share these with family members, many others do not have the opportunity or the people to share this important time in their lives with. This project was designed with both of these groups in mind in an attempt to connect seniors with others through the social networking site, Facebook. The element of writing was also adopted into the project as a means to get seniors to reflect on their lives …

A Freelance Writer's Guide To Marketing Online, Rachel Leanne Deason

Theses and Dissertations

"A Freelance Writer's Guide to Marketing Online" describes and demonstrates how freelance writers can use the most current social networking tools and basic marketing principles to market themselves online and find freelance writing work. Potential users of this trade book are experienced Internet users who do not have an extensive business or marketing background. Accompanying the manuscript, provided on a cd, is an analytic cover piece.

"Some Rights Reserved": Weblogs With Creative Commons Licenses, Clancy Ratliff

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Teachers' Writing Groups: Collaborative Inquiry And Reflection For Professional Growth, Sarah Robbins Ed., Kathleen Yancey Ed., George Seaman Ed., Dede Yow Ed.

KSU Press Legacy Project

How can teachers in whatever setting they work effectively facilitate their own professional development through collaborative writing and reflection? Teachers Writing Groups addresses this question by focusing on a community of educators that uses social writing as a vehicle for learning. This book delves into questions about writing, reflection, and professional development as an interactive social process.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Technical Writing, Bonnie Noonan

Faculty and Staff Publications

At the time of this study, I was primarily a compositionist becoming acclimated into the field of technical writing. I was used to teaching "universal" concepts of the writing process (pre-writing, drafting, editing, and proofreading) and historical concepts ofrhetoric (writer, audience, purpose). Furthermore, I am a liberal, from the 70s no less. I emerged into my young adulthood believing that positive social change could be effected primarily by resistance to corporate culture, a culture I perceived as antithetical to individuality. In this study of one document produced by one writer in a large corporate organization, however, I noted a dynamic, …

Écriture Et Identité Dans La Littérature D’Afrique Du Sud : Le Cas D’André Brink, Robert Mangoua

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

By engaging his works against apartheid, André Brink chose at the same time to face a double problem of identity: identity of his writing and his personal identity. To the first problem he responds by the relationship with the alter ego (borrowing from others) and to the second by his identification to Africa. His texts, luxuriant in “intertextual relations” but essentially oriented towards Europe, reveals a eurocentric reflex in him that revokes the problem of his personal identity.

The Challenges Of Hypertext Writers : A Case Study, Nandita Das

Theses

This thesis examines the challenges of hypertext writers with respect to six aspects of writing: authority, audience, organization, document design, style and multimedia use. This study is primarily based on the theories presented in the three books-Jay David Bolter's Writing Space, George P. Landow's Hypertext 2.0 and Ilana Snyder's Hypertext. Information is collected by means of structured interviews from Bolter and Snyder. This study reveals that the hypertext medium does pose challenges to writers who are used to writing for the print medium and are new to the hypertext medium. Hypertext environment requires that the writer should either …

Occasional Papers: On Writing, Janice Rowan Poley

Hollybush Series

Volume 1 of The Hollybush Series contains ten essays on writing by Glassboro State College faculty. The volume is edited by Janice Rowan Poley and the authors of the essays are: Diane Hamilton, Martin Itzkowitz, Mark Hutter, Margaret Tannenbaum, David Applebaum, Terence McGuire, Denis Mercier, Jo Cohen, Linda Packman, and Lynn Nelson.