English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

The process I have chosen is making crème brulee. There will be two sets of instructions, one for “advanced” cooks and one for “novice” cooks. The advanced version will entail an elaborate from-scratch recipe and will include high level cooking technique terminology. The novice version will be very simple, using (possibly) an instant crème brulee mix or at least a very easy homemade one.

It seems that, by now, the importance of considering the audience is somewhat cliché. Of course this is the theme of these chapters which plays into how one plans these sorts of documents. The readings discuss the vital role of researching even things that seem, to the advanced user, benign or irrelevant. Figure 20.5 may be excessive for some applications, but it does a good job at expressing many of the points for consideration when formulating a set of instructions.

1: What should be done about the "Dear..." I kinds of want to address to specific people, but not sure if their positions should be left in/out.

2: Conclusion paragraph is probably kinds of weak and/or needs to be reworded...?

Based on the tone of the instructor blog on cover letters and a thread on the home page, the issue on how to formulate a resume and/or cover letter seems to be at least partially resolved. That is to say, focus your documents with regard to your situation and the primary reader with a certain level of empathy towards that primary reader.

The biggest thing that I got from these readings is that resumes are a huge waste of everyone's time. A person can spend an outrageous amount of time constructing the 'perfect' resume and simply have it discarded by potential readers because those readers happen to not like the bullet style you have chosen to outline your skills. This likely has something to do with society's general theme that, in the business world, no one wants to really get to know anyone else before they do business with them-decisions are made hastily, often irrationally, and based too much on aesthetics.

The job I have chosen for this project is: Process Engineer for Corn Products International.

So far, based on the previous chapters, this text seems to have a very systematic approach to writing technical documents. This is a good thing because it makes everything quite simple; “Follow these steps and you will not fail...” Something I really liked was the use of power point to create an outline. I think this works because physically separating ones thoughts by having several slides helps to organize thoughts in your head more clearly-just makes sense to me.