English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

I was pretty picky about selecting a job for this project, so I was plenty frustrated while poking around the many job search websites listed in the assignment. This is especially true since I’m executing my third internship with the same company and they’ll most likely offer me a job when I’m done; the project description does say if you have a job you should look for one that would be an improvement.

But as soon as I found this one one and read the description I was sold.

For the job analysis, I chose a Telecommunication Analyst position with ExxonMobil. The job description can be read at http://www.exxonmobil.com/USA-English/HR/Jobs/HR_US_what_sample10.asp. My past experience as an intern with ExxonMobil was the primary basis for choosing this job. While working at ExxonMobil, I found that I not only enjoyed the work, but also enjoyed the people that I was working with. Both of these factors are very important to me when deciding where I am going to work.

The reading and instructions in Chapter 8: Organizing and Drafting was very interesting. How to put the introduction, body, and conclusion together in different genres and patterns was very informative. To begin the chapter, the memo about the Challenger Space shuttle provided an example of a distinct introduction, body, and conclusion that broadcasted all information needed to make a decision. I actually attended a lecture at Purdue that was held by a NASA engineer. The engineer actually brought this memo up but never presented it.

The chapter 8 reading focused on the organization of writing, the steps involved in writing a technical document, and a multitude of ways to bring your point across.

I thought the section on genres was a little far fetched. This seems like it should be placed at a much early level in our writing careers. By now most of have written enough memos, emails, letters, research papers, etc. to know how to use each effectively. On that same note I noticed a lot of this seemed like review material.

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...

This week’s reading from Technical Communications Today, entitled Organization and Drafting, focuses on the various aspects of organization that go into constructing a well-planned technical document. The author goes beyond the simple introduction, body, and conclusion layout and presents several genres available to the reader, each offering a different method of presenting information to an audience. In constructing large technical documents, the text makes the recommendation of creating an informal outline to guide one’s work. I found this section pretty interesting.

I found chapter 8 to be somewhat of a refresher for me as far as the concepts in the chapter go. I feel like by this point in most of our lives we have a pretty solid idea of how to outline and draft documents. However there were some key points I took away from this document. I’ve definitely had to write some documents where I implemented some of these useful key points I observed in the reading

I understand the need for an introduction, body, and conclusion in most documents, especially technical documents. For example, the letter about the O-rings was a perfect situation when points needed to be re-iterated and emphasized several times over. However, in many of my experiences writing memorandums and such documents, the manager reading them has specifically said or implied to ‘cut through the crap and tell me what I need to know so I do not have to read things that are considered fluff’.

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.

According to Chapter 8 – Organizing and Drafting in TCT, the organizational pattern of a document should be constructed distinctively for the type of genre at hand. One of the first steps toward this is to create an outline, which I think can be an effective tool in technical writing especially. I’d assume that all of us were required to come up with an outline for at least a few of our research papers from elementary school through high school, but I’ll admit that I usually drafted the outline after my paper was written.