English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

I'm one of the many in this class to whom "white paper" is a new term. I think the only times I've read or heard about "white papers" were in blog posts and/or comments earlier in the semester in this course.

I found it interesting that the steak behind the sizzle white paper stated that for a white paper to be successful it must contain “compelling prose.” I find that this will be a challenge for creating a white paper. I realize that all of the success really comes down to how well you can incorporate technical knowledge, experience and “compelling prose” into a white paper. I find that it may be somewhat hard to create a white paper that isn’t bias. This sounds like an area that working in a group will come in handy.

Before reading the context for this project, I had no idea of what a white paper was. I rarely knew the term let alone what kind of information was being presented. What is their purpose? Who reads them? Who doesn’t? These were questions I had when first becoming aware that we were writing “White Papers”. Reading through the context I began to understand the importance and use of the papers, as well as who needs them and who doesn’t.

I have never heard of the term “white paper” before this project, although I have read quite a few. From just reading the phrase “white paper,” I figured it to be some kind of unbiased government research paper. Reading “The Steak behind the Sizzle”, by Elissa Miller, shed a lot of light on this type of document. Miller does a great job explaining what a white paper is, in a white paper, and even subtly plugging her own company at the same time.

I have never heard of a white paper before this assignment. I found there a few major components to consider when writing a white paper: audience, context, and credibility. First the audience is important because your vocabulary should form around the directed audience. For example, if a technical white paper is meant for company executives, then the details and vocabulary should be more elementary so the executive knows what is going on. Likewise, if a technical audience is desired for the same white paper, more technical terms can be used.

I’ve seen the phrase “white papers” in the past but never really spent any time thinking about what it was or what it designated. It almost sounds like classified government documents, which I guess they could be. Now that I know the actual definition of a white paper I realize that I have read an inordinate amount of them. In fact, I think I spend more time reading white papers than I do other documents.

After doing the readings for this week, it seems that the two most important things to keep in mind while writing white papers are the audience (as with every other type of writing) and context. Writing a good white paper depends on the audience you are writing for. While one version may be good for one audience, it may not be so good for other audiences, such as those less knowledgeable about the topic. All of the criteria for a good white paper listed in "The Steak Behind the Sizzle" relate back to the audience.

When reading about the White Paper project I was still very confused about what a White Paper really was. After reading the “The Steak Behind the Sizzle”, Ellisa Miller explains what a White Paper needs to include and what it needs to omit.

Before this week I had heard of white papers, but I never really knew what they were. While there are some different types of white papers, such as a government white paper, or a marketing white paper, they all have the same basic goal in mind. They all try to inform the audience about an issue and the possible solutions.

This week’s reading served as an introduction to white papers. This makes perfect sense, as we will be devoting the rest of the semester to creating our own set of white papers. This week’s readings were very good for me since I had never read through an entire white paper. In the past, I would only skim through them in order to find certain information that I was looking for. The majority of the white papers that I have skimmed through in the past were more like the Motorola white papers. They consisted of technical information that would bore the average audience.