Technical and Professional Communication

Course Objectives

As the front node of the syllaweb indicates,

This course is designed to prepare you in the methods and forms of communication used in business and professional environments, with special attention paid to the new demands of electronicÊ communication skills and the "grammar of the screen" in a marketplace still dominated by the printed page.

According to departmental and institutional guidelines,

Technical and Professional Communication addresses the kinds of writing and speaking students will encounter on the job and incorporates ... practices that have proven to help students of all kinds to improve their writing and speaking ... The mix of technical and communication professionals in the same course will help each to work with managers, for example, and all of these technical professionals to work with communication professionals.

We will spend the first part of class learning a shared terminology, through reading various texts (both online and traditional papertexts) and exploring enough theory to give us a common vocabulary. We will then venture into the tasks of identifying and naming the kinds of technical communication tasks specific to your individual major(s) and creating ways to practice and develop skills pertinent to those tasks.

We will examine concepts including, but not limited to:

• why technical communication is an area worth studying;
• how to identify and/or create a "rhetorical situation" through appropriate use of various types of argument;
• how to name, learn about, and approach an audience, whether it be an audience of one or of many, a familiar audience or an unknown quantity;
• what the important differences are among and between various types of media and how writing to those media can place different demands on the construction of an argument;
• how to recgonize and correct common errors in Mechanics, Usage, Grammar, and Spelling (MUGS);
• incorporating the reporter's "5 W's + an H" (who, what, when, where, why and how) into planning and presentation, and examining that often-neglected question ... "so what?"
• revising and re-writing with a focus on sailing the 7 C's ... completeness, conciseness, concreteness, consideration, courtesy, clarity and correctness.

Assignments will be tailored to address these concepts; as the class develops and proceeds, we may well find ourselves focusing on one or two of them above and beyond the others. That is, of course, the way the standard workplace functions -- we will discover what interests us most, what we are best at, and we will work at those things to produce documents which reflect that focus. If at any time during the semester you have an idea for an alternative assignment which would help you more professionally than one of those designed and presented, feel free to "pitch" that idea, not only to the instructor, but to the class as a whole for feedback.

You may rest assured that unlike many of the writing classes you may have taken to this point in your academic careers, you will not be writing simply for the instructor and occasionally for your classmates; I hope that in some way this means you will not simply be writing for a grade, either. Your final project has been designed to be marketed to a publisher; most of your writing in class will be posted to publically accessible electronic spaces. Again, these new writing spaces and expectations reflect the workplace you will be entering. How are these changes reflected in the way(s) you might think about your professional writing skills?