English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

The software that I am planning on doing my technical instructions on is Steam. For those who have never heard of it, it is made by the Valve corporation and once downloaded it runs from the windows taskbar. Steam allows you instant access to their extensive game library when you can purchase, buy, and install any new games you want and then you are able to launch any game you want from their games menu. Along with keeping all your games in one easy to find location, it allows you to play them from any computer, not just your own.

The reading responses this week were about how to use what we have already learned about knowing your audience, and how to apply that to writing technical instructions. The readings focuses on how you can make sure you instructions are "user-centered" instead of them being "system-centered." Making the mistake of having your instructions "system-centered" will only frustrate the user and probably cause the instructions to be ignored.

Q1: Does it seem like including the same header as my resume takes up too much space on the top of the page?

Q2:I think the conclusion could use a little more work, although I'm not sure what to add. Does anyone have any suggestions?

This is going to be the first time that I have written a cover letter while applying for a job and before these readings I was not sure at all how to write one, or what to include in one. It seems to me like a waste to that I would go through all that effort to write something that might never be read at all. Since most of my experience applying for jobs at this point in my life has been walking around job fairs talking to recruiters and handing them my resumes, I have not had to write a cover letter while applying for a position yet.

While most of the readings talked about the basics of how to write a good resume/cover letter, they all seemed the same to me. The readings that did strike me though were the accounts of the actual recruiters and how they look at resumes and decide who gets an interview and who doesn't get a second look.

The job I have found is a summer internship at Coke Cola in either Atlanta, Georgia or Louisville, KT. The job posting can be found at
https://purdue-csm.symplicity.com/students/index.php?s=jobs&ss=jobs&mode...

Chapter 8 is a good review chapter. While it did bring up some points that were new, most of the items it discussed were things I have been using in writing for awhile. Saying a writing should have a introduction, a body, and a conclusion is mostly common sense by now. As well as stating you should outline a document before writing it. However it did bring up some new things, and also discussed some things in ways I hadn't considered before.