1©Karen L. Thompson Department of English University of Idaho

What is Technical Writing?

At the University of Idaho

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English Major

Literature Emphasis

Professional Writing

Emphasis

Creative Writing

Emphasis

Teaching Emphasis

Students who major in English choose from four program emphases. Professional Writing is one of these.

At the University of Idaho

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English Minors

Literature Minor

Professional Writing Minor

Creative Writing Minor

TESL

Minor

We also offer four minors in English and Professional Writing is one of these.

Broad Definition of

Professional Writing

• Any form of written or oral communication—other than

that produced or circulated as art. It is often referred to

as workplace writing.

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Examples of Professional Writing

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Professional Writing

as a Career Choice

• copy writers develop marketing and advertising content,

• public relations communicators manage brand image and business communications,

• editors review/revise the work of others and plan publication content,

• technical writers collaborate with other professionals to create/revise client projects and translate technical information to lay audiences,

• multimedia specialists create web authored content in a variety of media and across a range of platforms.

• the median salary for these jobs as of 2014 was between $60K and $70K (payscale.com).

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Professional Writing Courses at UI at the 200 and

300 levels

English 202 Intro to Professional Writing

English 313Business Writing

English 316

Environmental Writing

English 317

Technical Writing

English 318

Science Writing

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The primary learning objective:

• Learn and gain applied practice in how to enter

and successfully communicate in professional

environments.

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About English 202:

Introduction to

Professional Writing

• This course will introduce you to the theory and practice of

professional writing and its functions in workplace settings.

• It is designed to be taken alone or as part of the curriculum

for the Professional Writing Emphasis.

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About English 313:

Business Writing

• Emerged from the communication needs of commerce, so it has a

focus on interpersonal and intercultural communication from both

within and without a business or organization.

• Students who take this course tend to be business, finance, and

accounting majors but it is open to and taken by many other

majors.

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About English 316:

Environmental Writing

• Emerged from the need to express our relationship to our environment and to understand how language shapes this relationship in terms of ourselves and others (public policy).

NOTE: because environmental writing has this dual focus, it also includes art texts.

• Students who take this course tend to be majoring in environmental science, natural resources, and wildlife management but it is open to and taken by many other majors.

English 316 is offered through our Semester in the Wild Program

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About English 317:

Technical Writing

• Emerged from the communication needs of inventing and using

technology, so it has a user-centered design focus with an

emphasis on developing a highly readable style that includes

translating dense technical information to audiences with lower-

levels of technical expertise.

• Students who take this course tend to be engineering, science,

and technology majors but it is open to and taken by many other

majors.

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About English 318:

Science Writing

• Emerged from the need to communicate the results of scientific

research, so it has a focus of disseminating those results to both expert

and lay audiences.

• Students who take this course may be majoring in biology, chemistry,

food science, plant science, animal science, and geological science but

it is open to and taken by many other majors.

• NOTE: this course is cross-listed with JAMM318 and we offer it in

alternating semesters with them.

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These categories are not mutually exclusive.

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Technical Writing

Science Writing

EnvironmentalWriting

Business Writing

• When a business writer analyzes

data and presents it in a report, it

is similar to scientific writing.

• When a science writer submits a

request to purchase software, it is

business writing.

• When a technical writer gives a

presentation to a group of potential

investors, it’s business writing.

• When an environmental scientist

studies how audiences perceive

messages about climate change, it

is a form of technical writing

(usability).

• Etc. etc. etc.

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Multimedia

Audio

Video

Interactive

Print

Professional writing is created in all media

forms and delivered in a variety of platforms.

Our professional writing courses will provide you with guided practice in producing these forms.

Upon successful completion of a course, you will have sample work that can be posted to an online portfolio to show potential employers.

Writing is a Problem-Solving Activity

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The project deliverables in this course (and on the job) are important, but if you learn how to produce them as tasks, you will not learn how to write well because the solution to a problem in professional writing is never the only available one.

Writers must constantly interpret writing situations and weigh possible responses to effectively meet these situations. That means the situations and products are dynamic, not static.

Understanding how writing is a problem-solving activity will help you develop writing skills that transfer to new situations.

Our Courses are Aimed at Helping You Develop

Transferable Problem-Solving Skills

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If you saw the movie Taken, you

know that the character played

by Liam Neeson used

transferable skills to get the bad

guys and rescue his daughter.

We won’t be doing anything as

exciting as that, but we will be

working to help you further

develop transferable problem-

solving composition skills.

Therefore, throughout the course you will

• Study concepts that are transferable to many different

writing situations and apply these concepts to complete

each project’s deliverable (i.e. end-product).

• Think of these transferable concepts as sets of writing

skills you are placing in a toolkit that you can draw upon

after you leave the course to make effective choices in

any writing situation. And the best friend in your skill-set

tool box is rhetoric.

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What is rhetoric?

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The classical definition of rhetoric is the

use of language to persuade.

Persuasion can be positive or negative,

but in common usage, rhetoric has

increasingly been defined negatively.

And, there’s a reason for that.

Plato and Aristotle from School of Athens by Raphael Sanzio (1509)

Negative definition of rhetoric.

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Because the art of persuasion can be

used for --- let’s just say—not

necessarily noble ends, the word

rhetoric has a pejorative (negative)

meaning.

This negative meaning is often

associated with political rhetoric, where

language is used to defeat another

candidate through

distortions, misinformation, or outright

lies.

Modern definitions of rhetoric.

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A more modern definition of rhetoric

acknowledges that it informs whatever

we do with language.

It is how we use language to elicit any

number of responses from diverse

audiences and for a wide variety of

purposes.

There’s just one more thing you need to know before starting the first project.

I don’t really want to read that report from you.

Don’t take this wrong but no one in the

workplace wants to read what you write.

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• Solve problems,

• Gain a better understanding of something,

• Make effective decisions,

• Plan work they and others will do, and

• Create a paper trail for

• and legal purposes.

Workplace readers will NEED to read what you write to:

This helps me.What a great writer!

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