English 306: Introduction to Professional Writing

Professional Writing is something that started as a secondary consideration to me, since my original intention was to pursue Creative Writing as a long-neglected passion and interest. In my educational background I have been introduced to many different cultural and historical issues, and it is these as well as my love of writing and my strong foundation in the linguistics of English that drive me to reconsider Professional Writing as a primary interest. I believe I have an understanding of rhetoric due to my experiences in philosophy and many theology and history classes.

Kaye Maloney
Memo: What is Professional Writing?

To: Mr. Rivers
From: Jackie McKee
Date: January 15, 2008

What is Professional Writing Memo

I am a senior and I graduate this fall. It took me three and a half years at Purdue to figure out that I wanted to be a Professional Writer. I had four different majors which all taught me different things about myself and the type of career that suits me. I enjoyed my Communication and English classes, so I knew I wanted to pick a major somewhere between those categories. Professional Writing was the perfect choice.

Upon entering professional writing at Purdue, I had already established a fixed definition of the major itself as well as the type of work professional writers perform. My initial generalized understanding of professional writing revolved around translation and communication. I believed professional writers to be skilled typists, expert interpreters, and masters in the art of language whose job description was simply to take complex information and make it accessible.

To: Professor Rivers
From: Brad Fawaz
Date: Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Subject: What is Professional Writing?

It is easy to assume that professional writing as a major is meant to prepare students for roles like editing and publishing, journalism, and public relations. I must admit, this is basically all I used to know about professional writing. I adopted the vague concept that professional writing meant writing in a professional environment. Nonetheless, after examining professional writing a bit more, I have come to realize that writing is important in all fields. Skills acquired in professional writing can equip an individual to work on reports, databases, e-mails, different types of books (from calendars to textbooks), and even assembly and operation instructions. Despite the need for professional writing in businesses and organizations across the world, professional writing is often taken for granted. It seems that most people do not even know what professional writing is.

I am tempted to call professional writing a lost art.

It’s been a rocky road for me at Purdue while trying to decide on my course of study. First a Psychology major, then Communications, then Anthropology, and finally back to Psychology. But heading into the spring semester of my sophomore year, I realized that while I thoroughly enjoyed my Psychology major, simply liking it without a sense of direction in the study beyond a bachelor’s degree was not going to get me far in the business world. So, I heeded the advice of my coworkers at The Exponent and added the major of Professional Writing to complement my Psychology degree.

As a first semester Professional Writing major enrolled in introductory courses, I am still developing my views of professional writing and what I expect to gain from the study of it. However, I can describe my current views of the field and why I think I would like to be a participant.

Although often time professional writing is simply described as the proper use of rhetoric, or a process of transferring information rather than adding any new information, I believe it to be quite a bit more than that. Professional Writing and Rhetoric offers a definition of professional writing as "organizationally situated authorship," (Peeples 5). This is a very broad definition that includes technical writers, journalists, business writers, and just about anyone else who writes and/or publishes for a living.

Memorandum
To: Nathaniel Rivers, Assistant Director of Professional Writing; ENGL 306 class
From: Samantha Schneider, student
Date: 14 January 2008
Re: What is Professional Writing? Memo

This memo presents a proposal for a research report that will look at the Professional Writing major at Purdue University. The research will then provide a descriptive profile of the major as well as information on what can be expected by those who are interested in pursuing the field.

An Overview of the Major and its Goals: