Weekend Review

I think I am pretty clear on what a Professional Writer is and does for everyone who reads their work.

I am still un-clear on what rhetoric really means and how to apply it to the field of professional writing and editing.

PWE and its workplace

A professional writer can be the Neo of the Matrix. They potentially could take someone else's studies, thoughts and ideas and write out something for other readers to understand, hence taking a code nobody can read and write something for everyone to understand.

It is important that a professional writer grasp the environment he or she is writing in or for, because communication is key and if he/she writes something that nobody understands that writer breaks communication with whomever is reading their work. For example, the manager of a company writes a memo to its employees about a new policy that is going to take into effect. If the manager uses words that non of his/her staff would understand the point of the memo would be pointless because the communication of the document would not be fully understood by the employees to adopt this new policy, because they did not understand what their manager was trying to say.

The saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words" defines why a writer must be precise with its word choice because words are the only way of communicating when verbal communication is not an option.

Ideas/ brainstorming PWE positions

1. How does a PWE stay motivated while working on topics not particularly interesting to him/her?
2. What does it take for a technical writer's work be respected and used?
3. What kind of ethics do technical writers have?
4. How do editors deal with controversial subject or things they don't believe in?
5. When 2 or more PWE's collaborate on a give project, how do they divide the work and avoid "too many cooks in the kitchen" syndrome?
6. How do eitors organize their work areas? - How does this affect their work?
7. How does a technical writer sort through their info to decide what is worth publishing and what can be discarded?
8. How do editors make the choice to include or exclude material from a book? How do they know what will appeal?
9. What type of training beyond an undergraduate degree is required to work is marketing and corporate communication?
10. How do editors know better than a writer, what the audience needs?
11. How much knowledge should a PWE have on a subject before writing assit/writing with it?

Rhetorical Activites 2&4

2) The closest example I could think of when encountering an example of a argument that really is not an argument, would be the television show "At the movies with Ebert and Roeper." This is a show that has two well known movie critics talk and argue newly released films. Ebert and Roeper both give their audience as well as each other their opinions on what movies are good and bad, but how can they openly "argue" what films are better than others when there is a script that they follow on the prompter next to the cameras. In the text it states, "opinions belong to individuals, while facts belong to everybody" (pg. 15). The show only shows a theatrical sort of argument versus a rhetorical argument, because it is scripted and both Ebert and Roeper are not really listening to each other's opinions and arguments about what films a must see, because everyone is entitled to their own opinion and you can not change someones opinion or else you would be changing the script of the show and that would no longer be theatrical, which is what everyone whose watching does not want to happen.

4) I believe that every college kid goes through this art of persuasion in which their friends persuade them into going out during the week instead of doing homework. The persuasion starts out with an excuse to do it in the morning or that everyone is going out so you might as well go out and not be a "party pooper." The person who does not want to go out at first is strong with determination of sticking with his/her decision, but as all their friends who bring up all these excuses such as great bar specials or telling you that you really do not have that much to do starts to get you thinking and soon enough you are closing the books and heading out for the night in which you were suppose to be doing homework. I am a Catholic and my religious background automatically puts me in confrontation with others when the word "God" comes into play. For example, my friends and I will be talking about our church services and how some involve fun music and a relaxed atmosphere, but when Catholics such as myself bring up our church service its always that my religion is so old and boring and so completely different from all others. I try to argue that my church is getting better with the "rules" but who am I kidding, except for myself because just like people, religion will never change. So, its very hard to want to argue about my Catholic background, because its really the only religion that has not evolved with time and even my views change about religion over time and I do become accessible to being persuaded on other religions. People who are smokers or overweight can be persuaded to change their habits very quickly. It could be for their significant other who does not like a smoker or he/she is a health nut and only buys healthy foods.
Everyone is easily persuaded, because it is human nature to agree to disagree on any subject that involves an opinion, because opinions are personal.

Jack Selzer and the Engineer

Jack Selzer wanted to better understand how people write rhetorically, meaning he wanted to know how people such as engineers and how they write not necessarily what they write. When teachers and other instructors try to teach people how to write professionally, most of the time they can not explain efficiently. So, Jack studied somebody who was an engineer who wrote professionally everyday without trying or having a writers background. He also wanted to learn how engineers and other scientists planned, arranged, reivesed, and wrote.

What I thought was most intereresting about Jack's research was, how precise and accurate the engineer wrote his proposals. The engineer would brainstorm and brainstorm and then write one draft that was nearly perfect. A typical professional writer has many revised drafts before its final product. The engineer was on target, because he would resarch what his client wanted so when it came time to writing he did not have to revise. Selzer, noticed that the engineer had specific "rules" as to how he writes and develops his assignments. Such as, keeping the paragraphs short, using easy to read text, and making it very organzied with a beginning, middle, and end. Selzer, knew the engineer was accuarte and correct in his writing skills because he had tape recoreded his ideas and thoughts. He also interviewed the engineer's co-workers and re-read the engineer's old documents. Selzer finally had these follow up interviews with the engineer to ask why he did the things he did.

Different Jobs for Professional Writers

Reading through some of the articles to get an idea of what kind of jobs are held for a professional writer I realized that there are many freelance writers. I think that makes perfect sense, because not many businesses want to hire one person to write such thing as a project proposal so writers with there technical writing backgrounds would want to be a freelancer so they can be hired by many companies. Other types of jobs that professional writers could be apart of is in the fields of business, science, communications, and law. The type of work a writer would complete for the science field would be to write up a lab review for other colleagues. A professional writer must be accurate with their writings because the point is to be rhetoric giving off only information that is precise and helpful to others. For example, a professional writer who writes for a fortune 500 company whose task was to conduct a proposal to one of their clients about investing in that company, the writer would have to complete that proposal with easy to use words, very short and to the point paragraphs, and accurate information that the client could quickly read and feel comfortable. This kind of task may seem easy, but takes an exhausting thought process and then numerous drafts before the final product could be considered "readable." Other fields that professional writers are based out from consist of magazine editors/writers and researchers, film writers, web designers, being able to report facts for someone, creating presentations, etc. All in all the field of professional writing and editing is becoming more demanding in our society, because everyone has their own opportunity cost of how they value time.