Program & Courses
PW overview | PW requirements | PW courses
PW Overview
Professional Writing is a rapidly growing field of study and professional practice that includes technical writers, technical communicators, information developers, documentation specialists, communication project managers, grant writers, editors, and web content designers.
Professional writers are:
- specialists and members of a field and a number of professions;
- skilled in working with writing and editing in different media, and with diverse tools;
- authors of various types of documents;
- content developers and testers;
- usability analysts;
- document--print and digital--designers;
- documentation specialists;
- editors and publishers;
- information architects; and
- active citizens who work within and communicate across communities and cultures.
Professional Writing students:
- are good writers and designers of a broad range of documents;
- like technology but more so the social and human aspects of writing and writing with communication technologies;
- enjoy working with others and are good team players and collaborators; and
- are creative, imaginative, analytical, quirky, self-motivated, and independent
In their courses, students will gain skills in:
- writing to and for various audiences--cultural, professional, organizational, etc.--in effective and persuasive ways;
- writing: creatively, with panache and poetic flair; informatively, with clarity, conciseness, and comprehensibility; persuasively, with detail, description, and supporting evidence;
- conveying complex information in informative, understandable ways with both words and images;
- mapping, coordinating, and managing large-scale projects; and
- exploring and mastering software to produce a range of documents.
In their courses, at their internships, and in their professional lives, Professional Writing students will produce:
- newsletters; fact sheets; press releases; fliers; brochures; grants and proposals
- reports (e.g., editing-related, project status, technical, recommendation, usability evaluations, policy-related, white paper/informative)
- web pages; web sites; database chunks; DVDs and videos
- documentation for products; instruction sets; training/teaching manuals and tutorials; and
- project plans; project maps; project presentations.
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