Writing in college and writing in the workplace are two very different types of writing. When you write in the workplace you are required to be as professional as possible, adhering to strict company protocol and remembering chain of command within the workplace. In college your writing is often more casual, allowing you to more easily express your feelings and ideas without worry.
After reading these tips I found that I unconciously do some of them. For example, reading my work out loud is very helpful because I catch common errors, I used to have the tendency to write how I speak and when I began to read a loud my work I found that I did would catch common errors. I found it very helpful to discuss not being reduntant in my writing. I learned to use the thearsus for syn. for the same meaning of a word, I found that this would really add elouquence to my writing. It would bring so much color to the language of my writing.
I thought that Gar's tips on suck-less writing was very interesting and could be very useful for my future writing. I found his tip on not being redundant was interesting because I sometimes even find myself doing this in my writing. He also mentioned using a different word for the specific device you are writing about would be a good idea. Another tip that I found useful was reading your work out loud to find errors. Overall, I thought that this article was very useful and interesting. He kept his writing carefree leaving the reader to not suffer from boredom.
After I read the article Gareth's Tips on Sucks-Less Writing, I felt that I picked up a few good tips that will help me write better in this course and also in my future career. One piece of advice was not to be redundant. After I read some of my writing over again, I realized that I sometimes say the same thing twice without thinking about it. It helps if you are consciously thinking not to repeat yourself and to read your work out loud. That was another tip in the article that I started to practice. Another piece of advice that I liked was the suggestion to get rid of the clichés.
These past few classes have really helped me to see the many different purposes of writing. I have never before thought this much about writing and its objective prior to this week. In college, when we write, it seems like a task- an assignment on which our knowledge and eloquence will be evaluated, criticized, and scored. Also, when we write for a class, we typically are only given so much freedom. We must stick to the professor’s guidelines, and the professor must stick to the curriculum, and the university must establish a uniform curriculum, and so on.
After reading the article, "Online Remark Can Now Sink Job Candidate," I feel directly effected. I am on facebook and you hear another story evvery week about how some kid in high school got busted for drinking because someone printed out a picture and gave it to the administration. After seeing all these articles, I have decided to go off facebook. Is it really worth it to lose a job because you had to document your drunkenness?
Based on readings from this week, I can see how writing in the workplace differs from writing in college. In college, most students write because the professor assigned it, or students write to their friends via e-mail and Facebook. Both of these kinds of writings are kept fairly casual. These writings also tend to be rather casual and geared towards a general audience. In the workplace, writing needs to be more concise and directed towards one person or a small group of people.
I feel that writing at the univeristy level and on the professional and business level is often very different, but occassionally similar in some ways also. Writing in the academic world focuses on either weaving a detailed and interesting story or presenting research or opinions in a semi-formal format most of the time. In the workplace, often research and reports are presented in a more standard format which rely much more heavily on the information and a more dry writing style.
Writing in the workplace and writing in college can differ in several ways. In the workplace much of the writing is more analytical. The writing usually involves a lot more data. Also, the information usually is a lot more familiar because you are usually working with it all the time. In college the writing seems to be more theoretical. It sometimes involves a lot more research and information that usually is not familiar to you. Writing in college also seems to be more about your opinions while in the workplace it seems to involve a lot more factual information.
I found that the reading of “Online Remark Can Now Sink Job Candidate” was very helpful when dealing with trying to get a job. This article hits very close to home with college students in today’s culture. The idea that whatever you post online can come right back to get you in your job search is a very scary thing to think about. A simple joke you may have put online while you were a freshman in college could easily cancel you out as a candidate for a job. I have heard of this idea before for friends of mine.