ENGL 420: Business Writing

When it comes to working in a team, you have to consider what's fair, and you have to consider your obligations to the team itself. Perhaps the most important thing to consider is what you are promising to provide the client in exchange for what you are demading, and whether or not it is fair. If you know that the project is only going to take you ten hours to complete, but you are charging $2000 because that's the going rate, is that ethical? How do you decide the ethics of such a charge?

This week there was a good amount of readings and even a video to watch. To me the most helpful reading was the one over proposals on PWOnline. More specifically the part that helped me the most was to see the example that was put on there. This example showed our group how to set up the proposal along with some things that we want to do with our proposal like being specific like this one did along with giving a solid background and introduction. We also decided, by seeing this one, that we need to put it in a language that everyone will understand.

This week’s reading was about the rules of effective language and how we can use it. The article “The Ten Rules of Effective Language” taught me a lot of useful information that I can directly apply into my future career. I am a business management major and from what I can tell the article is written in a marketing prospective since it gives many examples from commercials. Since I have some background on the subject, I was able to easily relate to the author and see his viewpoint. Rule number eight was especially informative and I learned a lot after reading it.

This week we read articles on how to create Gantt charts , 'The Ten Rules of Effective Language' and articles on ethics. I gained a bit of knowledge from the Gantt chart YouTube video as I didn't even know what a Gantt chart was after even working for Corporate America. This I feel may prove beneficial during future projects and be something that I can utilize in my future career. The ten rules article was also helpful in giving you ideas to think about for writing.

I actually felt that the Luntz article was particularly helpful. Obviously, every student wants to hear, "Write as simply as possible" but that never seems to be what we're taught. I feel like using the simplest language to relate to everyone is the best way to go about public speaking but if you do that then people may think that you aren't anymore intelligent then just those simple words you use. Often times, too, I hear people us larger words commpletely wrong. I even have a professor who says psuedo and I think he means semi.

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.

As I previously stated in a comment I posted on another classmate's blog in regards to the Ethics article. I believe that writing can't be "learned," but ultimately influence and precedent sets the tone for how we are to write, in fact in a professional writing. Today's politics and media bias in which one canidate or party attacks the other and return impacts super delegates and the popular vote, many times done in a subliminal manner.

I enjoyed the article on the ethics of writing. Ethics is a very important part of professional writing. As we work on our third project, it will be very helpful to keep ethics in mind. Ethics should govern how we work as a group and what kind of paper we produce. By following ethical techniques, our teams should work efficiently and not have one person doing all the work. Also the team should be able to help out a struggling member. According to ethical writing techniques, our project should not cause problems between us and any organization.

This weeks readings were about writing a Gantt chart and the ethics of professional writing. In order to write the Gantt chart we need to know what we are writing and what the deadlines are. The writing about the ethics of writing was helpful because it reminded us that we needed to be helpful and not annoying the clients. The five simple steps to success was a little cheesy but it got the message across.

So, I'd like to comment on our little in class reading assignment. It reminded me a lot about a book I've read called "Managing Transitions." It's premis was that when you're trying to manage a change in an organization you have to go through the majority of those 10 simple rules we talked about. MT's process consist of these lines, Start with an ending which means finish what it is you are trying to change. Next is the middle ground where some people get lost and some strive. Then finally is the new begenning where the old is completely gone and there is a new way of doing things.