The Art of Professional and Technical Writing

Professional writers are vital contributors to the communication process within an organization. We are liaisons between ideas and people, and are responsible for informing, entertaining, or persuading target audiences to make decisions or take action through the art of rhetoric. Our most important task is to successfully transmit usable data in efforts by means of multiple facets to plan and present information deliberately. We must strive to rationalize our purpose for writing, gain public confidence, and maintain ethical and legal accountability, with each element coexisting to deliver rhetoric effectively. Methods for overcoming obstacles we as professional communicators face have always been of interest to me.

From my introduction to Big Chief tablet paper and over-sized pencils as a young scholar, I became fascinated with the power of text and the impact words have on readers. While most children dreamt of securing a position in the medical or legal profession, among other lucrative career choice, I fantasized having a writing career. It was not atypical to find me positioned in a pecan tree with book, tablet, and pencil in hand composing the next best seller. And as technologies evolved to typewriters and then computers, I remained loyal to the compilation of words. I previously and continue to be memorized of how texts captivates and affect readers’ lives. We share a sense of ownership – one of encoder/decoder of messages.

I felt it essential to impart upon others expertise I had acquired through vast study of literature, academic, and professional writing and became an English/language arts teacher. Middle and high school students needed to only know basics, such as syntax, but I challenge them to explore creative, proposal, and other writing styles. Yet, I maintained faithful to my writing career through contract employment during extended academic breaks until I utilized my talents in full-time positions within disparate industries. I have writing and edited educational test competitions and SAT prep training material, agriculture instructional manuals to submit for EPA approval, documents for asbestos court proceeding, marketing and promotional materials for corporate clients, and so much more. Thus, I have demonstrated high comprehension level of governing standards and regulatory guidelines pertaining to confidentiality, copyright laws, and internal organizational policies.

Understanding various style guides, including The Associated Press, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, and The Chicago Manual of Style, has been instrumental to my writing and editing accomplishments. In addition, I own an array of resources – from Words into Type to The Copyeditor’s Handbook – and a wealth of materials in support of online writing. Formerly considered a tool, social practice within print and electronic arenas initiated a transformation in writing comparable with circumstances that arise due to informational availability and usage. I understand that there are significant differences in both writing mediums, and I take great measures to remain abreast of innovative practices through professional development or subscriptions to various industry-related publications. In the past, I have relied on my knowledge of technologies consisting of Microsoft Office, familiarity of HTML and visual software, Final Cut Pro, and other applications most of which I learned via on-the-job experience, exhibiting the desire to advance my skill set.

However, awareness of the conventions of writing and technologies does not make an effective professional writer. Productive writers must identify with and create social space with readers. Writers participate in research and risk assessment to situate readers in efforts to determine social and visual aspects of texts. Investigating cultural constraints that alter readers’ reactions permits information to become more usable. I am a researcher of not only information to initiate the communication process, but also of my target audience to engage reader interaction permitting texts to be well-received. Writing comprises perceptions and relationships built from idea conception to document development and beyond. It is necessary to view readers as participants in the writing process, and my foremost consideration is to develop user-centered documents while simultaneously adhering to organizational agenda to influence readers’ decisions and actions.

Writing is not merely an art form or a career choice. Writing is a lifestyle – a proficiency that continuously evolves. I intend to perpetually hone my talents for the betterment of my readership and organization encompassing skill, accountability, willingness to produce social space to enhance information exchange. In the near future, I anticipate securing a role as Senior Writer/Editor within an ever-changing, innovative company producing highly effective documents that greatly impact the everyday lives of audiences.

Defining Rhetoric

“The duty of Rhetoric is to apply Reason to Imagination for the better moving of the will.”

-          Francis Bacon

From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance Era to modern day, the characterization and purposefulness of rhetoric motivated continuous debate in consideration of its functionality within disparate areas of study, including art, science, and philosophy, as well as the role of rhetoric in politics, particularly speech writing.  Early evaluators worked diligently to determine the value, if any, of rhetoric in verbal and written communication. Arduous research, innovative documentation, and elaborate explanations formed collaborative definitions of the term, as fathers of philosophical thinking emphasized an assigned meaning of rhetoric.

Corax of Syracuse, founder of the art of rhetoric, instituted eloquent language as a method of engaging story telling – comprised of an introduction, an argument or proof, and a conclusion – established for citizens representing themselves within the legal system, and based on the perception that information presented could not be proven as absolute certainty (12). Later Plato accepted rhetoric to be grounded in philosophy, dejecting the untruths in place of well-established proofs. Aristotle classified rhetoric for its means of persuasion in regards to a particular case, a derivative of Plato’s definition, accomplished through the interworking of style, organization, and delivery (14).

Cicero believed that rhetoric was an integration of natural ability, comprehensive knowledge of liberal arts. According to Cicero, rhetoric was a learned skill only achievable in the course of formal instruction, giving weight on the importance of education during the Middle Ages (15). Peter Ramus placed less emphasis on the rubric of logic and sought to prove rhetoric to encompass only style and delivery (16); Francis Bacon gathered rhetoric to contain a notion of rationality; and George Campbell expressed it in terms or sensory stimulation, common sense, and intuitive sense shared but all humans (17).

There were countless scholars of the art of rhetoric following those intellectual minds; yet, commonalities overlapped. One thinker builds upon or revitalizes an idea manufactured by a rhetoric analyst before him. A thorough understanding of rhetoric is, within itself, complex prior to additions made by individual contributors. Conceptualizations become repetitive in nature and definition.

Rhetoric is art. Rhetoric is communication. Rhetoric is presentation. Rhetoric engages audiences to believe, or at the least, consider messages delivered by its writer, speaker, designer, instructor, political representative, and so on. Rhetoric responds to questions and convinces. It motivates a discussion, exhibits power, and empowers presenters and audiences though words, phrases, and even body language and expressions. Rhetoric engrosses the imagination and leaves more to be imagined due to its creative impact. It teaches logic and defines turning points, delivering audiences from the commencement to the center to the margins of an event. Rhetoric is innate and a learned skill.

How is rhetoric defined? To integrate determinations conceived by originators of the study of rhetoric: simply, yet, elaborately put, rhetoric is a means of relaying visual, verbal, and written information to a critical and decision-making audience, encompassing elocution, presentation, logic, truths, and creativity to form an expressive art of communication.