After reading the first section on ethics, I learned that business writing and all writing affects more people than one may think. Not only does the writer need to keep the interests of the audience and himself in mind, he also has to worry about his responsibility to many other people like his family and community. In this way, writing, I learned, is its own form of ethics. We take into account the responsibility to be ethical to all of our different types of audiences to produce a document which serves the purpose of informing while also making everyone better off. In the second section about ethics, I learned about the fundamentals of ethics. The first is to have respect and care for others. This is simply like the "golden rule." However, ethics takes it one step further into actually caring for others, meaning we should work towards improving others' well beings. The next fundamental is do good; no harm. This just means that the main purpose of writing something in business is to do something positive that is in no way negative to anyone. The final rule is to understand your goals. If one really has a good perspective on what he is writing, to whom he is writing it, and why he is writing, then the document should turn out very positive with these goals being met. This is the best way to produce a document that is useful.
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Fri, 04/04/2008 - 09:42
I agree that ethical writing is learned. I'm not at all convinced otherwise. Ethics are difficult because everyone thinks that they believe is right so in most cases I would even say that everything everyone writes is ethical, because to them it is. However, it may not be to you or me.
Fri, 04/04/2008 - 09:44
While it is important to keep ethics in mind while writing, we have to make sure that we don't interpret this as "say only nice or good things". There are many cases where important, but negative issues need addressed or that we need to inform others about a negative situation whether it is something someone else did, an uncontrollable situation, or disagreement. Where ethics comes in is how we address these issues. Obviously, we have to include "bad" things and negative feedback in our writing at these times, but we need to present it in a factual, this-is-not-right-because-let's-find-a-solution sort of way, not just a "I don't like this" way.