I enjoyed and believe the article, “Ten Rules of Effective Communication,” is a very useful and relevant article for this class. This article defined concrete rules of communication that I believe can be applied in all areas. On the other hand are the articles that were scheduled for Friday. I had a tough time believing many of the statements in the readings within the Social and Cultural Issues chapter of “Professional Writing.”

I had trouble understanding from the very beginning of the first section of this reading assignment, “Ethics and Professional Communication.” This section begins by stating, “Ultimately, the purpose of all professional writing is to promote better relation between people and to improve some people’s lives (but not at the expense of anyone else).” This my be true as it relates to social and cultural issues, but to state that it is the purpose of all professional writing is absurd. I can think of many examples of professional writing that does not achieve this goal, nor does it attempt to achieve this goal. For instance, there are many editorials in newspapers and other news sources that intentionally write with the sole reason to harm others. The author of this section of our text book has a right to state how he or she believes writing should be used, and in a perfect world, the author’s views may be true. However, these views are just aren’t realistic.

To be honest, I believe the author is using this professional writing text book as a pulpit to preach how the reader should treat others. I do not mean to say that I am against what the author is stating, I wish everyone wrote only to spread good and care for others. But can these writing habits be taught or learned? I believe values such as respect and care are part of a human’s personality. These values can be (dishonestly) projected through professional writing, but to teach somebody to write this way regardless of how they feel is like painting a steel ring gold and telling the “reader” it is one hundred percent gold.