English 402 Real World Application

Because of our segment on tone in professional writing I have become very aware of the tone in messages at work. The tone was always there and before this class I usually had an emotional reaction to it. I wish I could say that because I now recognize the tone I can separate my feelings, but unfortunately that is not the case. What I have found is that my response has changed.

One of the issues I see frequently in e-mail chains is an escalation of negative tone. The first message may be a little abrupt with each response a little more severe, until upper management is being copied on what has become a written tongue lashing or tattle-tell session. This happens frequently between departments or shifts due to varying priorities on certain tasks.

One specific example that comes up routinely is for a quality monitor that requires cooperation from multiple departments. In the most basic terms one department delivers the material and another department completes the test. A schedule has been set in place to minimize impact to production. If the material is not available on schedule the e-mails start flying. Before long we have management from both departments copied on an e-mail chain indicating that NO ONE knows how to do their job. Although this can be amusing as a by-stander it is not at all productive. Because of this class I was able to see that it all began with the tone of the first message. I was able to neutralize the situation through a diplomatic e-mail explaining to both departments the necessity of the test and the benefits of staying on schedule. As a result I am now the person BOTH departments contact if any material goes missing. I just haven't managed to figure out how exactly that benefits me. I need to find a way to use these powers to reduce my workload instead of increasing it.

Media Kits at WSU

Here is a link to an online media kit provided by Washington State. WSU Nutritional Media Kit

Technical Writing Analysis

I chose to analyse Michael Sasser's version of the technical writing assignment for this week. I found it to be fairly obvious that Michael has experience with this type of instruction as he created a very concise re-write with a professional tone throughout. He begins with a clear description of what he is providing instructions for as well as why we would want to map a shared drive. Another point that made me feel he was technically inclined was the fact that he started the instruction numbering with 0 instead of 1. This is an interesting approach and would be acceptable in a technical environment however it may seem odd to anyone outside the industry. In this case his audience would be internal to the company so it may be expected. On the other hand, instruction step 0 is not an action step and is more appropriately labeled with a 0 instead of a 1 for this reason. Michael is polite and uses the word please. I also noted that he included the Help Desk as an option in addition to Network Administrator. In most large companies the help desk would be a more appropriate contact so it would be important to note.

For the most part the instructions are very good but I did notice that Michael used "her computer" in step 1. and "she" in step 8 which assigns a gender to the user. Throughout the rest of the instructions the user is gender neutral.

Michael's interpretation of the intended audience was different from mine. I wrote my version for the end user whereas Michael's version appears to be geared at someone helping another individual set up a drive with most steps beginning with "The user will need" or "Have the user". This implies that the user will not be setting up their own drive. There is nothing wrong with this interpretation I just found it interesting.

Michael also did a great job including details and examples such as he did in step 7 "\\server\mainfolder\applicationfolder\" If the instructions do not have screenshots it is important to give the user an idea of what they are looking for. This makes it very clear that they are doing things correctly. He also did a very good job explaining why someone would want to reconnect at logon and what that function will accomplish. He did an excellent job in step 8 stating that the user will need to map the network drive again if they log in to another computer. This may seem like common sense however having worked at a help desk myself I am painfully aware that it is not common knowledge.

Overall I though Michael made a vast improvement over the original version, he should be careful with the "her" and "she" though, this makes it seem that only girls have issues setting up drives. With those two little words omitted, Michael's version is something I would expect to see in the professional setting.