English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

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.

The concept of a white paper is unique, and pretty interesting, to me. For starters, how can such a specific title be so misunderstood by so many? End sarcasm. I don’t think the term ‘white paper’ is a fair name for these documents, as it offers no description or support as to how advantageous they can be. Throughout the past 3 years in Computer and Information Technology, and working in IT, I’ve read more white papers than I care to recollect.

White papers are like marketing advertisements for the business class.

The topic this week and for the remainder of the semester is white papers. I've had some experience using white papers in the past, but most seemed either overly technical, in the case of a theoretical physics paper, or overly biased towards one solution, as in the case of a wireless carrier's product. However, after reading the material covering white papers, I can definitely see how an unbiased white paper can be very informative and can help a decision maker make better decisions.