Genres in Technical / Professional Writing

Over the course of the semester, you will submit 600 – 800 word contributions to the Pitt State Technical / Professional Writing Internship site (pittstatetechwritinginterns.blogspot.com) using the Blogger online publishing tool.  The site will serve as a resource for future interns, other technical / professional writers at large, and students contemplating technical / professional writing as a major as well as as preparation for you as you enter the job market.  Keep these audiences in mind as you complete your contributions.  Each contribution focuses on one of four goals:  defining technical / professional writing for yourself and for others outside the field (future coworkers in other departments, for example); exploring how genre works in technical / professional contexts; understanding the workplace; and preparing for the job market.  If you have questions about these assignments, contact me, Jamie McDaniel, not your internship supervisor.


2)      Genres in Technical / Professional Writing

Readings

Carolyn Miller, “Genre as Social Action”

Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff, “Rhetorical Genre Studies” and “Genre Research in Workplace and Professional Contexts” 

Assignment

Your internship supervisor has asked you to contribute one entry to a guidebook for a kind of writing (or genre of writing) that you have encountered during your internship.  This guidebook is not simply a style manual (with information such as margin width and typeface, for example).  Instead, the internship supervisor wants to help future interns and other workers understand a genre of technical / professional writing by describing the primary elements of that piece of writing (what Miller calls “typified rhetorical actions”) and the ways in which this genre works within your specific professional context (“recurrent situations,” to use Miller’s language). 

Additionally, in order to better understand the genre, the internship supervisor has asked you to research other jobs and types of professional situations in which you might use this genre and describe how it is used within that context.

Finally, in order to increase the persuasiveness of your contribution, your internship supervisor has asked you to include appropriate research from specialists in the field. 

Your contribution should

·         Describe the primary elements of a technical / professional writing genre used during your internship

·         Outline the ways in which this genre works within your specific professional context at your internship site, and

·         Describe other professional contexts in which this genre might be used and the ways it might change in those other situations