Week 1 Introduction

        Writing for the Professions  

    Subject No. 101058

    This week's reading:

    Petelin, R, & Durham, M. (2003). Writing in a Business Environment in The Professional Writing Guide: Writing well and knowing why Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin pp. 1-13

    This week's question:

    Summarise the points Petelin makes about the need for attention to clear writing in organisations? Is this relevant in the age of digital publishing and the internet?

    Quick Links:

    Week 1 Lecture Slides
    Week 1 Lecture Slides (in pdf note form)
    Week 1 Lecture (audio) M4a


    Practical Exercise 1: Comparing two professional writing documents
    Research Exercise 2: Researching a professional 'discourse community'
    Style Exercise: Eliminating Wordiness 1

    This is the home page for Writing for the Professions and will contain all the details of the subject for the entire semester. We shall be using this website inconjunction with vUWS in order to organise, manage and teach WFP this semester. If you are away, then you can easily catch up by checking out the activities for the day you miss. If you wish to access this site directly (rather than go through vUWS) type http://stc.uws.edu.au/wfp into your browser.

What are the aims of the course?

    One major aim of the unit is to have you develop an understanding of theories and issues related to professional writing research and practice and to both investigate and discuss these in more detail. To this end, classes each week will incorporate a reading which can be found in pdf form linked on the homepage of this site and also at the beginning of each week. All class members are expected to have read the weekly reading before coming to class so that they can participate meaningfully in the class discussion.

    At the beginning of most classes, an allocated pair of students will briefly outline and discuss the reading and answer the set question. A well prepared presentation will go beyond the reading and will incorporate other sources and ideas. This presentation will form the basis of a brief class discussion about the topic. The presenters must also submit by the following week a 500 word summary of their presentation and response to the set question.

    The second major aim is to have students practice using different “genres” of professional writing and to develop a more professional 'style' of writing. To this end, you will be doing a series of weekly 'style' exercises which teach you ways some of the main ways to improve the clarity and sophistication of your writing. You will practice these via a set of weekly exercises.

What do I do with the weekly exercises?

Each week there will be a number of exercises which relate both to the various theories and issues (as discussed in the lectures and the weekly readings) and to elements of professional writing style. You should use the time available in your tutorial to work through these. You will probably have to complete many of them at home but remember that the website is always here. See the Learning Guide for the exact details of the minimum number of exercises you must do and how to submit them.

You do not have to complete every exercise in every week, but must complete a minimum number and submit them as part of your Writing Portfolio Assignment (see the Learning Guide and/or vUWS for specific details). We recommend that you keep multiple copies of your work in case files get lost or corrupted. You can email your work to yourself or use a USB stick.

CAUTIONARY NOTE: while the most popular way to save data these days is by using one of those nifty, tiny USB Flash drives, a portable HD is a much safer option. If you insist on using a USB drive for all your assignment work, get one that is mainly made of metal (not plastic) and one which has a long cord attached so you do not accidentally leave it plugged into a public computer. Cheap, no-name drives will not work very well, or may stop working just as you need the data. Do not work off USB drives, instead copy the data to your Desktop on to the Hard Disk, work off the Hard Disk, then copy it back the USB drive when you are ready to leave the computer. We know quite a few students who have had their drives made unreadable by just using them too much.

EXTRA NOTE: make sure that the computer you are using at home has excellent virus protection. The most important thing is that the database of viruses which your virus scanner uses, is updated online on a regular basis. Avast! or AVG are ones we know which works better than Nortons' and are free.

Practical Exercise 1. What do professional writers do?

There is a school of thought which thinks of Professional Writers as in fact professionals who communicate through writing. That means just about all professionals, since all professional people write on a regular basis. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, and programmers need to write, basically all the time. I regard myself as a professional writer even though I am not called this job title.

In July of 1998 there was a discussion, on the listserv of the Canadian Association for the Study of Language and Learning, aka "Inkshed," about nature and definition of "professional writing." Please read the discusssion.

Moving on ...

But let's get back to the more commonplace definitions. Professional writers probably do not regard themselves as creative writers. They do not make up stories, or poems or plays. Professional writers and technical writers convey information, with the main intention of having others understand that information. Professional/Technical Writing differs from non-technical writing in the following ways: 

  1. technical/professional writing has clarity, accuracy, conciseness, and readability;

  2. technical/professional writing is put to some use, rather than simply being enjoyed;

  3. technical/professional writing is often collaborative;

  4. technical/professional writing is often produced within organisations.

Your tutor will hand out various publications. Pair up with another student in class and examine two publications and try to focus in on the Clarity, Use, Collaboration and Organisation dimensions of various magazines and periodicals. And think about Persuasion (which is missing from the above list). Are there any publications which typify all the features above? Which ones do you like, and why? Which ones have the greatest common appeal? Which ones employ persuasive techniques?

    Answer the following questions about your two publications. Keep some notes about your responses as we will ask people to discuss their answers in a class discussion:

      1. Who is the author? Person/organisation? How is this reflected in the style or language or layout of the publication?
      2. Who is the intended audience? How is this reflected in the content, language, layout, design of the publication? Give an example.
      3. What is the intended purpose of this publication? Information, entertainment, persuasion, a combination of these? Give a couple of examples.
      4. Describe the main characteristics? Style, layout, language, type of content: do these match the list above?
      5. How does the publication reflect the style or 'culture' of the organisation which has published it? Look at the style of language, colours, layout etc or any other characteristics.
      6. What image does each organisation wish to project via both their writing style and their design choices. How do you know?
      7. Compare these with the second publication you are examining. Which is more likely to be successful for its purpose and why?

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    What is a professional writing 'discourse community'?

    Most people, on any given day, move between and within several 'communities'. They encounter their families, their neighborhood, their friends, their immediate colleagues, practitioners of their profession both local and national, people who share recreational or entertainment interests, and people who share their geographic area. In each community, there are conventions about what can be talked about, what gets assumed, and how one can talk about different things. These conventions shape a 'discourse community'.

    The term was first used by sociolinguist Martin Nystrand in 1982 and further developed by American linguist John Swales* in 1990. He presents six defining characteristics of a discourse community. It:

    1. has a broadly agreed set of common public goals
    2. has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.
    3. uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.
    4. utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims
    5. in addition to owning genres, it has acquired some specific lexis.
    6. has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.

James Porter (1992) further defined the discourse community as: “a local and temporary constraining system, defined by a body of texts (or more generally, practices) that are unified by a common focus. A discourse community is a textual system with stated and unstated conventions, a vital history, mechanisms for wielding power, institutional hierarchies, vested interests, and so on.” From the above exercise you might notice that some of the publications differ in the kind of language they use, what is appropriate/acceptable to write about and so on. Many of these differences are subtle but these subtleties may mean the difference between engaging or not engaging with the audience of the piece of writing. The diagram below illustrates some of the many discourse communities of which people may be members.

While this concept may be somewhat out of favour, it is still useful. Swales (1990) defines “discourse community” a group of people who attempt to reach a "broadly agreed set" of goals by the use of a common terminology in speaking or writing. This idea is relevant to us as we must realise that each profession will have its own rules, expectations, style and assumptions upon which the writing is founded. Here's a reading which overviews Swales' argument or notion.

Research Exercise 2: Researching a professional discourse community (this exercise will have to be done later but is a good one for your portfolio).

Research the profession that you wish to join by interviewing someone currently in the profession about the kinds of writing he or she does on the job. Write a few paragraphs which describe the characteristics of the discourse community is at work in this profession. You might ask the following questions:

    • What are the writing conventions of this profession?
    • What are the basic assumptions that ground the profession?
    • What makes someone an authority in this profession?
    • What kinds of things are important for communicating in this profession?

Analyze at least two professional documents from this discourse community. What are some of the defining characteristics? How are they unique to this profession? Think about both internal and external types of documents not just the obvious ones.

* Swales, J. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP

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OK, let's do some writing … introduction to the weekly style exercises

Before you start, download Allan Charlton's (2010) Style for Students. There is a pdf copy also on the vUWS homepage. Allan has been a technical writer and one of our long serving tutors. He has written this especially for this unit.

Why should I do these exercises?

Learning the principles of professional writing style is like learning to drive a car or play a musical instrument: a teacher talking about it only helps to a certain extent – you only improve with lots of practice and with constant feedback. Unfortunately, while many students think they are good writers, they often create longwinded, wordy prose and seem to have an aversion to the process of revising and editing their work. Even the best writers never get it right the first time around and need to spend time improving their prose.

Many of us have also learned our style either from what we have read, or from the conventions of the organisations or the professions in which we have worked. This is a problem especially when many students don't read traditional texts often (as opposed to online texts which have different style conventions), or have worked in organisations which have a preference for longwinded, wordy styles – especially law and government. Often it is hard to throw off the ingrained practices we have come to rely on.

Some useful references. Our mission in Writing for the Professions is to not only teach you some of the principles of plain English and good style, but to have you understand why these help your readers understand your writing much more easily and quickly. To do this, we will spend the last part of each tutorial looking at a particular principle of style. Many of these are based on the following references (all listed in detail in your Learning Guide):

Style Exercises: what do I have to do?

Each week your tutor will go through a particular principle and ask you to do some exercises which you can find at the bottom of the weekly web page. Download the Word file, complete the exercises (you must do the entire set). In each set there will be a corresponding set of suggested answers to the first few questions. You'll be able to check your answers these but don't cheat as this defeats the purpose. You can then go on and complete the remaining questions on your own. You submit these as part of your exercise portfolio at the end of the semester.

Warm up ...

How many of these can you find?

Principle 1: Eliminating Wordiness (we'll continue with this one next week)

Our first principle is "Eliminating Wordiness". Wordy and longwinded expressions can make it hard for your readers to understand your writing quickly and easily. Often, for reasons of convenience or habit, we use expressions which are cliched, longwinded and are often tautologies. However, many writers still feel that if they use simple words and expressions, they don’t sound educated. This may because they are used to reading longwinded, wordy prose themselves and think this is how all professional writing should sound. Not so! Read this recent newspaper article on how Australian hate cliches.

Look at this example.

We hereby wish to let you know that our company is pleased with the confidence you have reposed in us.

What's wrong with …

We appreciate your support, thank you.

For more detail, first check out our first Flash tutorial titled Style 1: Eliminating Wordiness.

To begin to improve, we firstly need to be aware of how our writing can become wordy due to some bad habits. How might we make some of these common phrases more concise without changing the meaning? Cut and paste the following table into a Word document and then have a go at simplifying the expressions. Discuss the answers in class. In some cases, there is more than one correct answer. Often if will depend on the context.

Longwinded
Replace with
Tautology
Replace with
at your disposal
for your use
reverse backward
reverse
upon receipt of
when we receive
precedes before
before
completely filled
progress forward
at this point in time
I personally
due to the fact that
brief moment
in the event of
estimated at about
at a later date
repeat again
jumped off of
around in circles
on a daily basis
true facts
owing to the fact that
in point of fact
clenched tightly
written down
close proximity
period of time
combine together
advance planning
in an intelligent manner
red in colour
repeat again
visible to the eye
recur again
specific example
close scrutiny
actual fact
came at a time when
12 midnight
make an attempt
exactly the same

You can check out the suggested answers here.

We will start our style exercises properly next week. This is only a warm up.

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