Intro Professio & Tech Writing

Catalog description

Professional and technical writing refers to a suite of suite of practical and procedural writing genres that seek to communicate information through precise, reader-centered documents. As Mike Markel and Stuart A. Selber define it, “Technical communication encompasses a set of activities that people do to discover, shape, and transmit information.” In other words, technical writing endeavors to condense and deliver complex information to a specific readership in the most accessible and actionable ways. Such capacities are increasingly valued in the professions, particularly in the growing technology sector. Introduction to Technical and Professional Writing stresses the value of this work and orients students to the concepts, methods, and approaches of technical and professional writing. The gateway course to the MA track in Professional Writing, the course will introduce students to the major conversations and genres of technical and processional writing and to the rhetorical methods and digital tools necessary to produce them. After a survey of technical and professional writing, students will produce a series of field-specific technical documents.