English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Chapter 8 – Organizing and Drafting was nothing that hadn’t been drilled into in middle school, high school and ENGL 106. Have a beginning middle and end, tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em, etc. I would say by now that after having to write papers and reports for almost every class that this is all common sense and even habitual.

I did like the “Smoking Gun” memo. As stated in the reading, it was a very good example of organization. While I stated that organization was common sense, it is always a good idea to look at good examples of other people’s writing.

This reading response focuses closely on my recent experiences when writing my job ad analysis. Tips from Chapter 8 - Organizing and Drafting have aided me with my detection of flaws in my writing. Before writing, I should outline key points that I want to convey. I also am willing to try to writing the body of my text first, and finishing with the introduction.

Chapter 8, Organization and Drafting, begins to identify key points of acceptable elements in technical writing. Generally, technical writing contains the same basic platform you would typically find in any other work with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Reading this chapter reminded me of when I took a communications course here at Purdue. The instructor for the course said the same thing as this chapter. “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Then, tell them what you told them.” I found that this is very helpful for writing speeches and papers. I also think the idea of outlining is good. I have a hard time thinking of what I am going to type. When I make an outline or at least a scattered mess of ideas on a piece of paper it makes it easier for me to start. It also helps me to continue my thoughts as I go.

This week’s reading, Chapter 8 – Organizing and Drafting, doesn’t really present any information that should be new to a college student, but I believe it serves as a good reminder of how our documents, technical or not, should be structured. I feel that the structure of a document can make or break its effectiveness. If you’ve ever come across a document that was all over the place, you could probably agree.

The reading from Chapter 8: Organizing and Drafting provided helpful instructions to crafting an organized technical document. Specifically the details of this chapter include methods on how to organize an introduction, body, and conclusion with a genre for a technical document. At the start of the chapter, the author provided a good example of an excellence form of a document skeleton. The memo from NASA about the erosion around the space shuttle O-rings, demonstrated the reasoning of why it’s essential to properly organize a technical document.

My biggest problem with writing any paper has always been the introduction. I know the basics of the introduction, they have been drilled into my head since high school, but that never made it any easier to write. I think my problem with the introduction has always been the attention getter. I always found the attention getter to be the hardest part of writing any paper. Thankfully, for me, the attention getter is not a part of technical writing. The six moves that were presented in this chapter should be a good tool to help with the writing of an introduction.

Welcome to the introduction to Reading Response 3. Hopefully the title caught your attention and you decided to read what I had to say. According to Chapter 8 – Organization and Drafting, there should be an introduction to your paper. I’ll be talking about what the chapter had to say about formatting your paper as well as experiences I have encountered in my day to day life. For now, sit back and enjoy the words that I am typing.

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.

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.