Genres in Technical/Professional Writing

My internship with The Writers’ Slate does not require me to do a lot of writing. The writing that I do regularly in my internship is the corresponding emails between the students being published and The Writers’ Slate. According to Miller the genre of emailing is the “typified rhetorical actions” looking for the approval of the supervisor or coworkers. For this internship emailing is a large factor of communication especially the use of typified rhetorical questions, so that we are able to gain approval for revisions and publishing.

Typified rhetorical actions of emailing are a normal occurrence in my internship because it is how I communicate with my supervisor on a regular bases regarding updates, meeting times, and revisions. One task that I am given to complete before each Issue is submitted for publications is to send out “congratulations letters” in the form of an email to each of the students that submitted  a piece that will be published. One of the previous interns to The Writers’ Slate was very helpful by creating a template for the rest of us to follow. By having this template to work from I am able to show consistency in the work that The Writers’ Slate is associated with. The template helps to have a format to follow along with but having key items that need to be filled in, such as: name of the submitter, title of their submission, Issue they will be published in, and the date to expect their issue to be published. By having this template there is less likely to be errors with student information, because it can be copy and pasted into the template before emailing it.

A genre that is present in the technical/professional writing field is change. Bawarshi and Reiff talk about how, “genres are dynamic because as their conditions change – for example because of changes in material conditions, changes in community membership, changes in technology, changes in disciplinary purposes, and values… -- genres must change along with them or risk becoming obsolete.” To be a technical writer we are constantly being asked to come up with new ideas to reinvent old ideas. In my internship with The Writers’ Slate the writer’s that I work with are constantly changing with each new Issue that is being published. Another change that an intern must be able to work with is working with students from other countries that submitted their work. This requires the intern to show flexibility in their work and to also be able to make the necessary changes to the students work to properly format it in the Americanized English that The Writers’ Slate is published in.

By having this internship with The Writers’ Slate I have been able to learn about all the different writing genres and how they are integrated into the writing professions, such as a technical writer. As Carolyn Miller said, “genres change, evolve, and decay.” With this knowledge and my experience with The Writers’ Slate I feel that I will be prepared for the ever evolving genre that takes place in the technical/professional writing work place.

Bawarshi, Anis, and Mary Jo Reiff. "Rhetorical Genre Studies" and "Genre Research in Workplace and Professional Contexts."

Miller, Carolyn. "Genre as Social Action."