From Schoolroom to Workroom

Being a technical writing related intern creates an employee with the ability to work within their authority to create, edit, and interact effectively. This helps combat some of the issues Susan Katz outlines for interns trying to learn about their position and how they can best understand their authority, ability to enact change and input their ideas, and their own real job responsibilities. I am an assistant editor for The CEA Forum. I post to The CEA and The CEA Forum’s Facebook pages with articles for readers pertaining to higher education and pedagogy that they can find interesting or helpful to their own teaching styles and experiences. I also observe the processes on The CEA Forum’s website, at https://journals.tdl.org/ceaforum, for the flow of processes that users, authors, and anyone else may interact with to use the site, interact with others on it, or submit to the journal. Then, once articles are submitted and reviewed, I help proof read them again for the authors’ record and format them to the journal’s style guide for continuity, using InDesign to create an easy to read and access PDF. 

For this position, an incoming intern would need the base knowledge of technical writing for writing formal  documents for The CEA Forum’s use or for sending out to authors, reviewers, and readers. The assistant editor intern needs to have a good hold on editing, obviously, so they can edit different genres of writing and edit or rework ideas for The CEA Forum’s website, journal, and current issue being created. Also a working knowledge of InDesign would be beneficial for any intern when they are formatting articles to match the stylesheet. 

In this internship I have flexed a lot of my real core technical writing skills that do not often get exercise in a lot of other classes. That has helped me keep my knowledge of document design and writing style, like guides found in The Chicago Manual of Style that I used in a previous technical editing class, current and effective in the workplace. A lot of my experiential learning was similar to Anson and Forberg’s topic of study of interns. They examined interns to learn more about  

“how writers in a new context perceive and adapt to complex and unfamiliar audiences, how they learn to use the language of the workplace, how they make connections and distinctions between experiential and academic learning, how they describe the influence of context on their texts, how they revise those texts, and what motivates those revisions” (Anson, Forsberg 207).

I learned about my new environment and how to interact within it in a new context outside of previous classroom learning. It has been a process involving new kinds of documents and unknown territory, learning through trial and error from an editing standpoint. I found myself studying these same topics in myself to further understand how to tackle new projects. I had to learn about how to interact with previously written documents, and that actually helped a great deal with understanding the level of formality in the language and how to match new documents to that conversation style, getting the message across quickly and without unnecessary fluff, while still being accessible to the interests of someone checking their email. The academic to to professional writing shift that Anson and Forberg discuss was an obvious hurdle. There is a difference even between writing for a hypothetical professional prompt in a class and writing for an actual audience of professional adults whom one could immediately assume hold a higher ability out of lack of confidence in a new environment. That writing, however, has been more doable than I feared before coming into this internship.

I thought I would have to converse more with authors and reviewers, but solicitation email attempts are a gamble for responses, and the issue itself does not require a lot of correspondence until final review with the authors for confirmation for the issue. But I have still done a large amount of writing for this internship. Distinct genres of writing for specific purposes and a communicative work environment helped me understand what was required of me and my work to help me be and feel successful in my contributions to the organization. 

 

Susan Katz, “A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise”

Chris Anson and Lee Forsberg, “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing”

Genres in T/P Writing

In my internship, I have written different kinds of documents. The genres range according to the context for which I am writing. Solicitation emails to readers and potential reviewers have a specific audience and tone for the writing. Writing, or rewriting, a stylesheet for the articles for the journal has been a large portion of my internship. This genre involves a specific set upof the material presented, usually to a particular kind of person in the workplace that knows how to interact with a stylesheet, follow its guidelines, and use it to format other genres of writing. Bawarshi and Reiff explain that workplace genres are different than academic genres in how they interact with their community and the ability to have more contributing depth and the fact that workplace genres are so often for a wider audience. A stylesheet for formatting journal articles, for example, could be read by anyone in that field and the reader would understand the setup of the message and what they were expected to do with the information.

Understanding a workplace genre does more than reading a solicitor email. The members of the journal understand the email asking for input from interested reviewers beckons a response if they find themselves interested, but a social genre like that does not necessarily require a response. Workplace genres, however, require a response more often than not due to the author’s and the readers’ responsibilities to their jobs. A document that will stay in shared files is open for fellow employees to contribute to, edit, and use for their own projects. Something like this will help keep more documents made by several different people have a specific and orderly continuity to keep the organization creating documents and genres as one entity together. In any organization that needs guidelines for certain kinds of documents can use stylesheets to keep multiple authors writing genres in the same fashion to help maintain the level of understanding of the genre itself, how to interact with it, and what to do with the document when written or received. Stylesheets are a genre that can help form genre requirements. If there are stated rules about how a certain document should look, then that will help with recognition of them in daily working activity.

Carolyn Miller describes the hierarchical levels of meaning and interaction with a genre, and a situation of meaning-as-action with a genre in Genre as a Social Action. It is like when a genre is understood and recognized, then it is already acted upon in its first way, leading to the understood interactions with it that the genre invokes. 


Bawarshi, Anis and Reiff, Mary Jo. Genre Research in Workplace and Professional Context.

Miller, Carolyn. Genre as a Social Action.

Defining Technical and Professional Writing

Technical and professional writing is an important field of study to incorporate into a lot of different work contexts. The writer can help multiple departments of people, creating a specialist to work with different kinds of writings. A technical and professional writer could be beneficial for the CEA Forum by reviewing its website, editing workflow documents, and doing any other upkeep tasks for the website, its upcoming issue, and its public Facebook page. Technical writers add more insight than other possible candidates might, because they have knowledge of writing, editing, design, and other helpful elements, making them well-rounded candidates to help a company.

A degree in Technical and Professional Writing is similar to having multiple degrees in different fields, because technical writing has many elements to it. A technical writing employee can manage both internal and external documents. Allen explains in “The Case against Defining Technical Writing” that defining technical writing itself can be harmful to people’s understanding of it, because when it is done it always puts the field in a box too small, focusing too much on one aspect of a wide variety of talents a technical writer has. In the case of working with the College English Association Forum, a technical writer can assist in the creation of new issues of the journal, interaction with readers, and upkeep of the website itself. The College English Association and the Forum both use Facebook as a social interaction tool to interact with people, so the technical writer can be involved in the public relations aspects that would usually need an entire other position. The technical writer can perform the actions of multiple employees, saving a company money that they would have to spend on multiple hires.

A technical and professional graduate, and, in particular, one from a humanities department, would be nothing but beneficial to a modern company. Degrees in the humanities are often overlooked in technical and scientific fields, but these candidates Bachelors of Arts Degrees are the exact things giving them a linguistic leg up on the competition. A technical degree in a humanities department gives a graduate knowledge of both sides of the spectrum. They will know how to articulate eloquently, and also when to slash a document with a red pen, editing down to only what is needed. Well-written emails, wide-audience memos, and technical documents like instructions are all within this candidates reach. A technical writer has their handle on rhetoric, and also understands how to get to the point and describe procedures that a scientist can execute but maybe not articulate in a more universally understandable way.

 Jo Allen, “The Case against Defining Technical Writing”

From Schoolroom to Workroom

The job title I hold in my internship is game designer. Game designer in my internship experience encompasses many other job titles. A few of those titles could be graphic designer, editor, playtester, project manager, and researcher. All of these titles come from the responsibilities I have had at some point in this internship. When first creating the game I was creating a paper prototype for all of our decks. This involved researching the various jobs that a technical writer can be in. I then moved on to editing the cards and checking for flaws in the game mechanics. I am now creating the artwork for the cards and box.

A required qualification for this internship would be time management. In my internship I am working with a partner and everything we have had to do have been on our own. We do not have a regular time where we meet so we have to use time in the evenings to get work done. Another qualification would be Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I have been using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to create all of our artwork. The company we are using to produce the game provides templets primarily in Illustrator and Photoshop. Another required qualification would be editing. We have a lot of written content and a lot of cards so errors and consistency are a big factor for producing a quality game.  

Some preferred qualifications for someone in this internship would be to know good design principles. A lot of what a game is composed of is the aesthetic and layout of all the components. Another preferred qualification would to know what makes a good game. Knowing what common traits are among games and how people interact with games. This can also include what other games do and how to take those ideas and relate them to a different game.  

A skill that I have had to learn and practice is writing creatively. Our cards are real world jobs that are applied to a fake game situation. Being able to relate that card to the real world job and to its game counterpart has been a challenge to do creatively. I have also practiced making elements with detail while also being simple. These elements also have to be similar in design so I have been able to practice branding those elements consistently.

A skill I thought I would have practiced more is editing. To equally divide the work between in the game my partner is editing more while I am designing more. I also thought I was going to have to work more with the game mechanics, but a lot of it had been already thought of prior to the internship.

The way that writing differs from school and workplace is somewhat blurred in this internship since it is based in the school. When writing for a game it is necessary to be more direct and spell things out for players. One also has to come up with wording that can resolve many different situations. This differs in school because often writing is done for a professor and they are knowledgeable about the topic so information can be left out because it shared in all parties.  As for working in school versus internship being able to consult the “boss” is not always immediate. In school the teacher is present in class and can answer questions when they come up. In my internship however we have had questions or wanted to make some bigger decisions that we wanted advice. We only had the once a week meeting to sit down and discuss what decision we had that may have been the wrong ones.

The writing context for my internship for the game has to be a low context whereas school can be a higher context. Throughout school we have learned some ways to format common game elements but I would have not ever thought too much about context. A game will mostly likely never be played in the same situation or context which is hard to write for and a meaning can be changed from just one word. This kind of writing is something that can be just learned from a school setting. Anson and Forsberg reflect on their observations of students in internships and they say “What her supervisors had was unspoken knowledge—something established that they were no longer were aware of thinking about.” This speaks to not being able to understand and get the entire context in school. One has to become familiar with the context which in this case would be playing different kinds of games. The hierarchy in my internship is simple, my partner and I are on equal level and report to our supervisor. We report to our supervisor because he has "the capacity to mobilize people and resources to get things done" (Katz 421). I would say that my partner and I have a negotiated authority between each other based on parameters set forth by the supervisor. Our atmosphere is laid back because even though we have someone to report to we are able to suggest changes and have them considered. This laid back atmosphere is sometimes difficult to navigate as it causes my writings with the supervisor to become somewhat sloppy on occasion.

Linda Driskill, “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations”

Chris Anson and Lee Forsberg, “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing”

Susan Katz, “A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise”

From Schoolroom to Workroom

Serving as an intern for Dr. Jamie McDaniel, director of the Technical/Professional Writing program at Pittsburg State University, offers a variety of opportunities for students. One of the more unique opportunities students may encounter is an internship as a game designer. In my internship, another student and I worked alongside Dr. McDaniel to create a tabletop game that would help students learn about what technical/professional writers do and the variety of careers that are available to people with degrees in technical/professional writing. While our game is not as sophisticated as a professional game, there are still a huge variety of skills required for this sort of project. Students need to be a creative writer, an editor, a usability specialist, a graphic artist, a project manager, and a documentation specialist all in one.

A required qualification for this type of internship is definitely an interest for tabletop games. Interns need to be able to design a game that not only they would want to play, but that other gamers would want to play as well. As Chris Anson and Lee Forsberg say in “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing,” “…the writer must first become a "reader" of a content before he or she can be "literate" within it. This literacy… includes highly situational knowledge that can be gained only from participating in the context” (p 225). The best way to achieve familiarity with the gaming genre is simply to play games. The interns will write the backstory and narrative of the game, in addition to the cards and the rulebook. These elements need to be clear and direct, but should also be entertaining and fun. This means that interns need to be adept at both creative and technical writing. Additionally, because they are in charge of the written content, they need to have advanced editing skills. Interns will design the artwork for the game, so they also need to be familiar with design programs like Adobe Illustrator. Interns will also design the layout for the cards, rule book, and other documents, so another Adobe program they may need to be familiar with is InDesign. Knowledge of good design principles is also necessary for this reason. Interns should also be able to work in a team; most games cannot be created by just one person. Because of this, interns need to be flexible. Each person in the group will have a unique vision, so it is the responsibility of the interns to create group cohesion. Lastly, game design interns should be skilled at organization and time management. There are many elements to designing a game and interns will have to maintain a regular schedule in order to complete these elements in a timely manner.

I have personally used all of the skills listed above during my internship, except for familiarity with Adobe Illustrator. Because I am in a joint internship, this responsibility was covered by my partner. My writing skills have also had to adapt while creating games. This relates to the writing context of my internship as well. In her article “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations,” Linda Driskill writes, “An awareness of the effects of specific situations, company procedures, and factors inside and outside the company has come to be known as the "business savvy" that only the experienced can apply in a writing situation” (p. 57). This passage is relevant because a writer can only become aware of specific situations and factors in the gaming writing context by being familiar with games. While I would ordinarily write in a fairly academic style, games require more simple language so they can appeal to multiple audiences. This writing differs from writing in an academic setting because we are generally encouraged to write in longer sentences and to use more advanced vocabulary. Because of this, the gaming genre allows more creative freedom in some way because the writers can use informal language and words that they may not use in an essay, but they are also limited in other ways because they have to use vocabulary that is consistent within the gaming community.

My work atmosphere is incredibly relaxed. Because I am in an internship with my professor and my boyfriend, the pressure is lessened greatly. Interestingly, this has not affected my performance in the internship. This is mostly likely because there is still a clear organizational hierarchy. Dr. McDaniel is ultimately in charge of the final product because he is the professor and it is his game, but he is also always willing to listen to our ideas or suggestions, so it doesn’t feel as though we are beneath him in any way. Susan Katz discusses authority in her work “A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise,” where she writes, “…I will use Kanter's definition of power, "the capacity to mobilize people and resources to get things done" (1983, p. 213). Authority can be taken to mean a source of power, and influence refers to a specific use of power” (p. 421). When this definition is taken into consideration, I would say that everyone had roughly the same amount of power and thus the same amount of authority. The game feels like a product of all of us despite being spearheaded by Dr. McDaniel, so I would say that the organizational hierarchy is relatively even in this respect.

Taking all of this information into consideration, I would definitely recommend that students experience this sort of internship. This experience allows students to apply and refine many different skills that are relevant in the technical writing field but are not exercised in the classroom or in other internships. Because of this, it is an incredibly unique and multi-faceted internship. Even if students lack a few of the “required qualifications,” those can be negotiable if other members in the group can balance these areas. Furthermore, this internship also grants students an opportunity to gain new skills that they may not have encountered in their regular classes.

Sources:

Linda Driskill, “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations”

Chris Anson and Lee Forsberg, “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing”

Susan Katz, “A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise”

Writing for School and Writing for Work: A Drastic Change

My job title is Technical/Professional Writing Intern for Women Helping Women of Southeast Kansas. My responsibilities include attending monthly board meetings where I take the minutes. I also meet with my supervisor to be assigned tasks. I help maintain spreadsheets of volunteers and donors. I helped design an ad campaign for a Men’s Auxiliary. I also design small flyers for different holidays throughout the year to encourage donations.

Required qualifications would definitely be organization. Working with a new and inexperienced organization involves a lot of trial and error. I need to stay very organized or I will fall behind. Another would be creativity. It is very important to have a creative side to designing ad campaigns in order to draw in contributors.

Preferred qualifications would be grammar and editing skills. Though these skills are not directly used, i.e. editing papers, they are very helpful in writing quality text on flyers. These skills are also handy when helping the Board write grant proposals.

Some of the skills I have learned in my internship are professional skills. I have learned how to work with an organization, particularly one that is charitable. I have learned how to work in a team and accomplish an important goal.

Some skills I have practiced are both my technical writing and creativity. I am a creative writer so I have never had any trouble with being creative. I have been able to practice writing for a more professional scenario, which has been very helpful for my future. I have gotten to flex my creative mind when working on flyers and ad campaigns. I want to do more than make something look pretty—I want it to make an impact on the community.

I thought that I would use my editing skills more, but I have not. The organization is so new that they do not have an extensive amount of text that needs to be edited.

Writing and working for this internship is very different than writing for school. For instance, writing for WHW is very important because women’s lives are at stake. They have very little, and our organization provides they with necessary help. In that case, the writing we do is important in gaining donations to help these women. When writing for school, I am writing for myself and a good grade.

I have three different writing contexts for my internship. I write in persuasive prose (such as flyers) to attract donors. I use a more technical style for writing grant proposals, and I use a more familiar tone with in-house communication. As Lee Odell says in “Relations between Writing and Social Context”, “The chief value of context is its usefulness in explaining the types of meanings writers attempt to express, and readers expect to interpret, in specific situations.” So I use different types of writing for different audiences and situations.

My work atmosphere is very informal. Much of our communication is done through Facebook or around a dinner table. We have people of many different backgrounds present which sometimes makes communication more difficult. Anson and Forsberg say, “An excellent way in which to understand the role of such conditions and their influence on the writing process is to study what happens when members of one discourse community begin to write in another, relatively unfamiliar way.” For example, we have people with graphic design, law, English, and administrative backgrounds, all of which require different styles of writing so we must work together to form a more cohesive system of communication.

The organizational hierarchy is as follows:

Co-Presidents

Board Members

Members

Volunteers

Recipients

As I explained, each group requires a different style of writing. “In contrast to literary or cognitive perspectives, social approaches to writing are interested in the relationship among writers, texts, and their surrounding context,” (Faigley, Cherry, Jollifee, & Skinner, 1985). 

From Schoolroom to Workroom

The Writers’ Slate is an online publication that promotes reading and writing in children and young adults. As the intern for The Writers’ Slate my responsibilities are pretty vast because it is only me and the Editor, Dr. Franklin. Dr. Franklin only has one intern for the whole year. So, that is three Issues that The Writers’ Slate publishes and the intern is responsible for working on all three. During the year I am given the tasks of working as the assistant editor, corresponding with the writers and designing the layout/format.

To be a positive influence and contributor to The Writers’ Slate, intern candidates should have a natural love for reading and an appreciation for the art of writing. They should also have organizational skills and be punctual with meeting the deadlines required for the internship. Another skill that a future intern should encompass is communication skills, face to face, over the phone, and email. They should also be able to keep themselves on track and use problem solving skills, but never afraid to ask for help. Quite a bit of the work they will be doing is on their own time away from Slate meetings, so they need to have these valuable skills that embody a Slate intern.

Intern candidates should be able to communicate clearly through a variety of situations. As the Slate intern you will most likely be communicating with a writer constantly through the process of preparing an Issue. These communications need to be seen as professional and easily understood by someone of any age and someone whose first language might not be English. In Linda Driskill’s article “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations” she talks about how the advances in technology and the expanding of intercultural population causes the need for understanding, empathy, and the ability to adapt while communicating to become more prevalent in today’s society. At The Writers’ Slate we receive submissions from a wide age range of students. When communicating with these students (“Congratulations” email or asking about spelling/minor improvements) you need to show patience and understanding.

Something that an intern candidate should also keep in mind is that even though The Writers’ Slate team is small there is still a work hierarchy to follow. In Chris Anson and Lee Forsbergs article “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing” they address the need for balance between the informal and professional in the work environment. Some of the tasks that will be asked of the intern are comparative to the assignments given in some of the Technical Writing classes. However, different from those assignments these tasks need to be handled in a professional manor because they are someone’s work being published in a respectable online forum. This should carry more weight for the intern and help them develop their professional self and their professional writing.

Finally, something else that would be beneficial to a Slate intern is some experience with both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign. It is okay if they are not overly proficient using it but should have a basic knowledge.  The Writers’ Slate is very understanding and likes to foster new ideas for design and creativity. So, if you are someone who has the ideas but are not very comfortable using these two Adobe tools don’t let it hold you back. A lot can be learned from trial and error.

Sources:

Anson, Chris, and Lee Forsberg. “Moving Beyond the Academic Community:  Transitional Stages in Professional Writing.”

Driskill, Linda. “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations.”