Basic Civil Engineering first year Notes- Chapter 4 Building.pptx
Workplace Writing Chapter 1
1. The Keys to Successful
Communication:
Purpose, Audience, and Tone
Chapter 1
2. Chapter 1 Learning Objectives
In this chapter, you will learn how to:
Determine your purpose for writing
Identify your intended audience
Perform productive prewriting activities
Complete revision-ready first drafts
Rewrite effectively to achieve appropriate tone
3. Determine Your Purpose
for Writing
Three purposes of workplace writing:
Create a record
Request or provide information
Persuade
Identify which purpose applies
4. Purpose, continued
Prewriting: Decide what you are trying to say by focusing on
the “Five W’s”
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
5. Identify Your Intended Audience
Tailor communications to intended audience
Ask yourself:
Am I writing to one person or more than one?
What are their job titles and/or areas of responsibility?
What do they already know about the specific situation?
Why do they need this information?
What do I want them to do as a result of receiving it?
What factors might influence their response?
6. Audience, continued
Classify audience by level
Layperson—no significant prior knowledge of the field
Expert—prior knowledge of the field
Executive—decision-making power and expertise
7. Audience, continued
Communications fall into four broad categories:
Upward: Intended for those above you (e.g., supervisor)
Lateral: Intended for those at your own level (e.g., co-worker)
Downward: Intended for those below you (e.g., intern)
Outward: Intended for those outside your workplace (e.g., client)
8. Audience, continued
Global audiences demand special considerations:
Distinguish high-context from low-context cultures
Avoid idioms, slang, abbreviations, and acronyms that may lead to
miscommunication
Rely on commonplace vocabulary and direct sentence structure
Avoid culture-specific references
Avoid attempts at humor
11. Rewrite Effectively to
Achieve Appropriate Tone
Rewriting
Check for accuracy, completeness, ethics
Consider organization
Fine-tune style
Adjust tone
Check and edit mechanics
12. Tone, continued
Remember the hierarchical relationship to your reader
Appeal to reader’s sense of fairness and cooperation vs.
sounding tough or demanding
Emphasize the reader’s point of view by using a reader-
centered perspective (also known as the “you” approach)
Use polite terms such as please, thank you, etc.
13. Tone, continued
Avoid excessively conversational style—remember
“business is business”
Never allow personal matters to appear in workplace
correspondence
A courteous, positive, reader-centered, and ethical
approach gets the best results
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17. Review Question 1
1. Which of the following is part of the prewriting
stage?
a. Checking the organization of the content
b. Choosing the most appropriate format
c. Creating a first draft that focuses on content
d. Revising style for conciseness and simplicity
18. Review Question 2
2. Which of the following questions is a good way to
identify your purpose?
a. “What is the best format for this communication?
b. “Who will read what I have written?”
c. “Summarized in one sentence, what am I trying to say?”
d. “How much background knowledge does my intended reader
have?”
19. Review Question 3
3. Which of the following formats was traditionally the
preferred written medium for in-house
communications?
a. Business letter
b. Memo
c. Fax
20. Review Question 4
4. Which of the following is recommended for the
drafting stage (as opposed to the prewriting or
rewriting stage)?
a. Analyze your hierarchical relationship with the intended
audience.
b. Check that the sentences in each paragraph are presented
in the best possible order.
c. Adjust the tone to suit the audience.
d. Concentrate on content rather than fine points of
mechanics, style, and tone.
21. Review Question 5
5. Which of the following is an example of writer-
centered prose?
a. “We accept most credit cards and PayPal.”
b. “Your order will be shipped as soon as you specify the
desired size and color.”
c. “You may reach us by telephone until 3:00 p.m. on
Fridays.”
d. “Thank you for your order.”
Notas del editor
Students whose previous writing has been limited mainly to academic writing on pre-set or suggested topics may not be used to thinking in terms of the purposes of workplace writing. You may want to ask students to reflect on writing they have done in the workplace or in volunteer/student organization work. Then ask them to categorize specific instances of writing as one of these three purposes.
Students may note that some writing has multiple purposes. For example, a brochure may be designed to both inform and persuade. In such cases, students should try to identify the primary purpose, or perhaps assign different purposes to different sections of the document.
Again, workplace writing opens up a new set of considerations about audience. Students who are used to writing primarily to faculty members (who generally have more knowledge than the student about the subject matter being written about) need to learn to think in different ways about workplace audiences. If you have asked students to reflect on workplace or organizational writing that they have done, you may want to have them return to those examples and classify the audiences to whom they were writing.
It is common for workplace writing to have not just a primary audience but also a secondary audience. Ask students to think about any features of workplace writing they have seen that are designed to accommodate multiple audiences. (Examples might include appendix materials in a report; glossaries; the “cc” feature on e-mails and memos.)
It is common for workplace writing to have not just a primary audience but also a secondary audience. Ask students to think about any features of workplace writing they have seen that are designed to accommodate multiple audiences. (Examples might include appendix materials in a report; glossaries; the “cc” feature on e-mails and memos.)
The main point for students to realize about the drafting stage is that the goal is to get ideas down—not necessarily in their final order or form.
Students may enjoy bringing in examples of e-mails, memos, or other types of workplace writing that illustrate successful and unsuccessful tone.