A RhetoRicAl AppRoAch to W - Write Professionally

[Pages:123]A Rhetorical Approach to Workplace Writing

3rd Edition

Prepared by the Professional & Technical Communication Program in the Department of

English at the University of South Florida.

Copyright ? 2016 by University of South Florida. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

ISBN:

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes or in writing by the Publisher.

University of South Florida Tampa, FL 33620

Table of Contents

License. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iv About This Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Preface to the Third Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Concepts 1

Workplace Writing and the Rhetorical Situation. . . . 2 Analyzing Writing Situations in the Workplace. . . . . 8 Researching Your Audience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Audience Awareness: Expertise, Bias,

and Circulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Usability Testing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Diplomacy, Tone, and Emphasis in

Business Writing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Diplomacy and Tone Checklist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Practicing Intercultural Communication. . . . . . . . . . 39 Making Sense. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Compression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Kairos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Table Of Contents

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Applications 54

Resumes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Cover Letters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Establishing a Web Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Business Plans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Memos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Press Releases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Elevator Pitches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Presentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Data Visualizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Grants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 White Papers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Contributors 107

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A Rhetorical Approach to Workplace Writing

License

Some of the articles in this textbook are published in the peer-reviewed open text at , which is licensed under a Creative Commons-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, and have been reprinted here with the permission of both Writing Commons and the authors. These works include:

Audience Analysis: Primary, Secondary, and Hidden Audiences

Diplomacy and Tone Checklist Diplomacy, Tone, and Emphasis in Business Writing Kairos Practicing Intercultural Communication Researching Your Audience

License

iii

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank several people for the invaluable assistance they provided during the preparation of this book: Dr. Joseph Moxley, Dr. Mark Leahy, and Dr. Meredith Johnson for their continued expertise and direction; Ella Browning, Cassandra Branham, and Tanya Zarlengo for their support and dedication to the project; Natalie Kass and Brooke Downey for their design expertise; the staff at ; and the many authors who contributed articles. Their willingness to give their time so generously has been greatly appreciated. And finally, special thanks to Dr. Julie Staggers for conceiving of the project and ushering the first edition into the world.

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A Rhetorical Approach to Workplace Writing

About This Text

A Rhetorical Approach to Workplace Writing, as the title indicates, approaches professional and technical communication from a rhetorical perspective. As teachers of professional and technical communication ourselves, we understand the importance of teaching students communication skills that are transferable to the workplace. Rather than focusing on traditional genre analysis, this textbook takes the more practical approach of analyzing real-world workplace scenarios. In an effort to accomplish the goal of providing our students with a set of communication skills and practices that can be adapted to a wide-variety of professional contexts, this textbook focuses on the importance of reading and interpreting the rhetorical situation during any communicative act, and guides students through the process of creating and designing documents from a user-centered perspective.

A Rhetorical Approach to Workplace Writing is specifically designed to serve the following courses at the University of South Florida:

? ENC2210 Technical Writing for Health Sciences Majors

? ENC3246 Communications for Engineers ? ENC3250 Professional Writing

The chapters have been designed to complement the curricula of these specific courses, while also being broad enough in scope to accommodate any course in technical or professional writing. Chapters

About This Text

v

are organized under two major categories, concepts and applications. Concepts introduce students to rhetorical, inquiry-based approaches to professional and technical writing. Applications look at how these concepts can be applied in specific writing situations.

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