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ENGW 3335
Technical and Business Writing

Week 3: Social Media in Business Communication; Introduction to Unit #2

Posted by Quinn Warnick January 28, 2011 Comments Off

I hope Thursday’s peer-review session provided you with some usable ideas for revising your letters. We won’t spend any more class time on the correspondence unit, but if you have any questions before you submit your letters, you can come see me during my office hours or email me to set up an appointment.

Next week, we will spend a day discussing the influence of social media on business communication, then dive into our second unit, which is a new twist on the traditional genre of instructions.

For Tuesday, please read the following articles before you come to class:

Your only other homework for the weekend is to synthesize your reviewers’ comments from Thursday’s peer review activity and draft your response letter to one of the three complaint scenarios. If you have any last-minute questions about the correspondence unit, please be ready to ask them at the beginning of class on Tuesday.

On Thursday, you will submit printed copies of your positive and negative letters, accompanied by stamped, addressed envelopes so I can mail your letters after I have graded them. In addition, you should upload an electronic copy of your correspondence unit (all three letters) to your Google Docs account and share it with me before you come to class. (I will show you how to do this in class on Tuesday.) In class, I will introduce the technical instructions assignment and we will conduct a few exercises about instructions.

Finally, I will soon be asking you to contribute items to the “Delicious Links” sidebar, so sometime this weekend, you should register for a Delicious account and make note of your username and password. (If you already have a Delicious account, you’re all set — just make sure you can login to it.) When we have a few spare minutes in class, I’ll show you how to add your own bookmarks to the class website.

If you have any questions about these plans, leave a comment on this post or send me an email. Otherwise, enjoy your weekend!

Categories: Weekly Updates

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  • Where am I?

    This is the website for English Writing and Rhetoric 3335: Technical and Business Writing, taught by Quinn Warnick at St. Edward's University in spring 2011.

  • Delicious Links

    The links below are the most recent additions to my collection of bookmarks that are relevant to this course. You can find a complete list of ENGW 3335 bookmarks on Delicious.com.

    Ikea Stonehenge

    This explains *everything*!

    10 Old New Rules for Business Emails

    Tim Berry offers good advice for improving business email. Here's my favorite: "Angry words are not biodegradable. Never argue in email. Walk down the hall or get on the phone. I’ve learned this myself the hard way, thinking my brilliant use of the English language could somehow make a point better than I could with old-fashioned talk. It never does. Email almost never wins a point or stops an argument. It almost always makes things worse, not better."

    10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging

    Nice list of realistic advice from Smashing Magazine: "The most successful blogs are more than a broadcast tool. They are a dialogue between the individuals within your organization and your users. It is important to listen, as well as speak. Unfortunately, the most corporate blogs fail to engage. Instead they focus on telling readers how great their products and services are. Rarely do they ask for feedback or ask questions."

    If you do this in an email, I hate you

    As usual with The Oatmeal, it's funny because it's true.

    Minimalistic Callouts Heighten Visual Appeal

    Tom Johnson compiles numerous examples of callouts in visual instructions and concludes with this helpful advice: "Callouts should not distract the focus away from the image but should supplement the image. To keep the callouts in the visual background, make the callouts as minimal as possible, avoiding callout bubbles, box formatting, or background shading."

    New York Times: E-Mail Gets an Instant Makeover

    Will Facebook's new email system finally kill email once and for all? (My prediction: No.)

    Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

    Farhad Manjoo carefully explains why some people put two spaces after a period. And why they're wrong. "Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It's one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men's shirt buttons on the right and women's on the left."

    The TED Commandments

    A list of ten rules that TED gives to every speaker. Good advice for anyone giving an oral presentation.

    The Art of the TED Talk

    Aimee Knight offers some great suggestions for giving a TED-style talk.

    10 Reasons Why YOU Should Care About Personal Branding

    Dan Schawbel: "Our brands are going to be seen everywhere that people are searching, forcing us to manage and monitor them daily."