76-870 Professional and Technical Writing

Units: 9-12 Department: English Related URLs: http://hss.cmu.edu/HTML/departments/engl This core requirement for the MAPW degree introduces students to the theory, research, and practice of professional and technical writing. Through reading, discussion, and writing workshops, students develop a rhetorically-grounded approach to analyzing communications problems and producing a range of effective and situation-specific professional documents. The user-centered approach views professional documents not as fixed formats but rather as means to accomplish specific, well-defined purposes: getting funding or support for a project (proposals), quickly learning a specific piece of software (instructional writing), or making choices among various medical treatments (science writing for general audiences). Because writers need a range of skills that go well beyond the actual inscribing of words on a page, students learn how to interview subject matter experts, work with clients, test documents on actual users, edit and revise their own work and that of other writers, and participate in and manage collaborative writing projects. The course features five or six major writing assignments, including a community-based client project and a final portfolio of revised and polished work.

Popularity index Rank for this semester: #0 Rank in this department: #0   Students also scheduled 76-786 Language and Culture 76-700 Professional Seminar 76-887 On-Line Information Design 76-775 Magazine Writing 76-888 On-Line Information Design Lab 76-771 Language in Design 76-322 Global Suffering: Interdisciplinary... 57-009 Vocal Master Class II 57-291 Keyboard Studies III 57-240 Acting I

Spring 2005 times

No sections available for semester Spring 2005.