Exported for Susan Cox on Wed, 19 Jan 2022 12:54:39 GMT

Part I: Rhetoric and Writing in

Professional Contexts

This book focuses on several writing situations you may encounter in professional contexts and guides you
through the research, writing, and analysis needed to create, write, and design effective, persuasive
documents. But before we discuss specific situations that call for these types of writing practices (which are
contained in Part II of this text), we introduce you to a rhetorical framework containing the tools, theories,
and concepts needed to address a wide range of contexts and audiences. At the end of each of these
sections, we ask you to consider a series of questions to think about as you do this work. You’ll refer back to
the rhetorical framework as you complete the cases.

Students and instructors can make use of this framework as you consider the context for a specific writing
situation, either in the classroom or beyond. In most professional writing situations, you will have to assess
a variety of concerns. We present this framework not as a series of discrete steps, but as considerations that
help a writer through a particular writing process, as well as to some of the main elements of this textbook.

Ethics, Diversity, and Social Justice

Many writing textbooks include a chapter on ethics, diversity, or social justice. We briefly explain these
concepts here first because we have made an effort to be socially just in this textbook’s design, referencing
practices (through being critical and careful in our choices about who and what to cite, and how to
characterize and contextualize those citations), activity development (through encouraging interrogations
of identity and methods of community engagement), and more. For example, this textbook was developed
for a particular type of class in hopes that it would more efficiently serve the needs of the students who
purchase it; we’ve put in every effort to make sure you get the most bang for your buck, and we recognize
this as an ethical issue. Access to pertinent information is a principle the authors of this text stand behind.
We’re committed to collaborating with students and instructors to continue to improve the textbook as
well. (Note: If you have suggestions for improvement, do let your instructor know!)

You may have heard of ethics before. Ethics is an area of study where researchers examine how morality, or
what is considered to be right and wrong, is determined in a particular community. Morals can also be
personal. Your personal morals may be different from those of your classmates, just as the morals of
religious followers differ strongly. When people discuss ethics in a professional context, however, they are
talking about the larger rules that members of a given context recognize and abide by. Ethics for
professional organizations are often expressed through a specific code of ethics or a mission statement,
or a statement of the overall purpose and goals of the organization. A company or organization’s ethics may
differ in some ways from your personal ethics, so it’s an important topic to consider when writing on behalf
of a corporation, business, government, or organization. 

Social justice is the idea that people should be allowed to reach their full potential, should be free from
harm, and should have their rights respected. Modern theories of social justice presuppose that justice is
reflective of its context. In other words, social justice is different than fairness or equality because it
recognizes that we don’t all start from a level playing field; our lives are contextual. In other words, social
justice recognizes that power relationships are real, and are often rooted in privilege, or unearned positions
people occupy in a society. In the same way that your professor holds more power in the classroom than
you do, people have different amounts of power in  business and professional contexts based on a variety of
factors, such as the socio-economic class they grew up in, their race, their gender, their ethnicity, their
physical ability, or their nationality.

Social justice also recognizes the reality of oppression, or the effects of people in positions of power using
their power to keep others from reaching their full potential, to harm them in some way, or to violate their
rights. The different identities people occupy, such as race, gender, socioeconomic class, age, ability status,
sexual orientation, and religion also mean that intersectional oppressions are possible (research Kimberlé
Williams Crenshaw’s invention of the term intersectionality in the Harvard Law Review for more
information). Intersectional oppression is a concept that means that the sum of social oppressions may
be greater than their individual parts. For example, a woman of color in the United States today may face
discrimination on the basis of her sex and her race, but she will also face prejudices because of their
combination.

Bias
All human sources of communication are biased. This is sometimes a controversial statement especially
when it comes to journalism. By the time we are old enough to become self-aware, our ancestries,
backgrounds, and life experiences have already affected the ways we think about the world. Sometimes, it
is possible we are not even aware of all of our bias as we try to be objective. Even the histories we like to
believe are objective have been recorded by particular people for particular reasons. For example, you’ve
probably heard of the Greek philosopher Socrates. But have you ever heard of his contemporary, Aspasia?
Both were active in Greek politics around the same time—some evidence suggests that Aspasia was
Socrates’ teacher—and we don’t have any extant works from either of them. However, the sexist biases of
historians over the years have rendered Aspasia relatively unknown, while Socrates’ name is quite famous
(Glenn; Jarratt and Ong). In the same way, the works and words of women in the modern professional world
are often valued differently than those of men. Studies abound showing that women in professional spaces
are talked over, ignored, and dismissed as part of everyday rhetorical interactions. Consider the case of Ben
Barres, a prominent biologist. Barres was at a conference and overheard a colleague say, “Ben gave a great
seminar today—but then his work is so much better than his sister’s.” That colleague didn’t know that
Barres is transgender; the sister was Ben himself when he was Barbara, and the work was identical. Barres
has also spoken about how much more respect he is automatically afforded as a man. (For more
information, see this story: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119239/transgender-people-can-explain-
why-women-dont-advance-work.)

Knowing that you, as a human, are a deeply biased source based on your own experiences, you must take
pains when communicating to do so with ethically sound intentions. Even then, remember that your
intentions may not always have the effects you desire, and you may have to revise your approach to
communicating regularly. You must also remember that your sources—including your professor and this
textbook—have biases as well. Having bias is not a negative or embarrassing thing; it’s simply a reality you
must deal with as a researcher and communicator.

Contextualizing Questions: Ethics, Diversity, and Social Justice

The following questions can help you learn what actions are ethical in a specific rhetorical situation:

What biases do you have in this particular situation? What values are influencing the way you make
decisions?
How do these values overlap and/or conflict with other people who are working in this situation with
your (stakeholders)? How are you managing this conflict?
What about the mission of the organization you are working for? What values does this mission contain
and how can you balance these values without sacrificing your own or those of your stakeholders?
What are risks to health, safety, reputation, etc. for you and for your stakeholders? How can you
communicate these risks in the most effective and appealing way?

Intercultural Communication and Globalization

As Internet technologies broaden markets for information, products, and services, producing
communication for global audiences has become increasingly important. The workplace, especially, is
becoming global in scope. Whether you work in banking or information technology, marketing, sales or web
optimization, you will likely encounter coworkers from a variety of cultures, locations, and backgrounds—
and your culture may well be just as unfamiliar to them as theirs is to you. Further, workers in modern
workplaces communicate with one another both face-to-face and through technologies like mobile
messaging and videoconferencing. Thus, you will have to navigate cultural differences through a variety of
different media.

Intercultural communication references the ways members of different cultures communicate. It’s
important to study and reflect on how to communicate with people from cultures different than your own in
the most effective, efficient, and ethical manner possible. Your professional reputation and your ability to
do your job hinge on this work.

Intercultural communication happens in every workplace, and it may happen between people you
wouldn’t immediately think of as being culturally different. Even moving from the university to another
workplace here in Greenville or another city in the United States will require you to navigate shifts in culture.
For example, the director of information technology for a national banking system who moves from
downtown Chicago to rural Lincoln, Illinois, to supervise installation of a computing system for customers
will have to work through a lot of cultural differences, even though the country and language remain the
same and she has traveled only about 170 miles. Meanwhile, the business writing teacher who moves
overseas to make connections to an international education market for his university will navigate many
similar—and many different—cultural moments.

Contextualizing Questions: Intercultural Communication and Globalization

The following questions can help you balance a number of often competing considerations when it comes
to intercultural communication, including:

What are the assumptions, values, and practices that individuals bring with them into communication
situations?
What tools, skills, resources, and preferences do individuals bring with them?
What countries, nations, and technological systems are individuals accustomed to 
operating in?
What regions, organizations, communities, and technological interfaces are individuals 
accustomed
to?

Many contemporary intercultural communication researchers agree that the process of answering the
above questions starts with understanding how individuals communicate. A website for Chinese users must
organize information very differently than one designed for users in India, Japan, or Western Europe.
Likewise, a business letter written to an English-speaking audience from Hong Kong will vary considerably
in tone from a business letter written to an English-speaking audience from New York City. The only sure
way to understand how individual communication preferences are affected by culture is to perform
research (see the section on Usability and Accessibility down below for examples of how to do this research)
with individuals from a given culture.

Collaborating, Networking, and Building Relationships

The building and maintaining of relationships are essential in any professional context or workplace. These
skills are often seen as the most basic but also the most important to doing business well.

Collaborating
To do group work or not to do group work is a debate in almost any classroom (usually for students and
teachers alike) and yet, group work and collaboration is a fact of life in the vast majority of workplaces.
Instead of thinking about whether collaborative/group work is “good” or “terrible” it’s more important to
think about how to make group work effective. It is true that you may encounter individuals who are not
skilled at working in groups or who do not do their jobs and mess things up for the group. In these cases, it
is a manager or supervisor’s role to speak with those individuals and/or remove them from the situation.
Similarly, in class group work settings, a teacher is the best person to speak to regarding a weak link in your
group’s efficiency. But the reality is that sometimes a group must accomplish tasks even with a weak link. In
these cases, you must trust that a manager or supervisor will observe and appreciate those of you who are
doing the work and that this will be recognized later in the process. You must also think about your own
workplace ethos and continue to build and protect your reputation regardless of others who are not willing
to do their part.

However, he following tactics may help improve group workflow and may motivate less-involved workers.
One approach is for group members to start a project by having a conversation about their individual
strengths and weaknesses and how and when they best communicate. If a group member is terrible at
planning but good at execution, for example, it makes no sense to assign them planning tasks, but they can
help with organization and editing documents. If a group member is great at following up on in-person
contacts but never responds to email or phone calls, it is important that other group members know this
upfront. Discussing these things early in the process will save the group a lot of difficulty later.

Another tactic is for group members to have regular check-ins to discuss how a particular project is going
and what seems to be the holes or weaknesses in workflow and/or actual document drafts. Of course, it’s
not always realistic to expect all group members to share honestly in front of each other so it may also be
important to share individually with a group leader or manager as well. Remember that being honest is for
the good of the project and not just to complain or get someone “in trouble.”

All-in-all, the better group work and collaborative skills you can develop for the workplace, the more
attractive you will appear in workplace settings when opportunities arise. Your supervisors and coworkers
will grow to see you as someone they can depend on and who will work to make solutions and not just
complain about what is not working correctly. Also, remember that not all collaborative situations will go
well no matter how hard you or others try. These “bad situations” can end up being some of the best
learning and development moments for you, others, or a company over time. Character and knowledge are
often sharpened and developed through adversity and difficulty. When a project doesn’t turn out as well as
you’d hoped, seek to discover what went wrong so that you can avoid it the next time around.

Networking
As with collaboration, social networking is crucial to your ethos in the workplace. Building up networks of
contacts and colleagues can be something that happens over months or years but that is essential to
making connections for yourself or others. Remember, when it comes to networking: be generous. Meaning,
if you are willing to connect individuals or groups who you know are seeking particular kinds of skills,
people, or products, those same individuals or groups will be more likely to do the same for you later. Think
of this as a “pay it forward” approach: be willing to help others so that they are willing to help you and
others at a later time.

Also remember that your reputation in the workplace matters. You should carefully evaluate the type of
people or organizations you are willing to recommend or network with. Your reputation depends on this. If
you recommend a poor worker, a poorly skilled individual, or an unethical company or business, it will
reflect badly on you. Over time, individuals and organizations will trust you less and less.
As for how to network, make use of social media and other digital technologies (especially LinkedIn and
Twitter, but also Facebook if members of your field have a presence on it) to build your professional
contacts. For more information about building a digital presence for yourself, try this article:
http://erinafrost.com/2013/09/24/developing-a-digital-portfolio/. Don’t forget to also attend in-person
events like conferences, meet-ups, and workshops put on by professional organizations. Also strive to
become active in professional organizations and clubs as much as possible, perhaps even by becoming an
officer in one or more of them. Professional organizations (e.g., The Association of Business
Communication, The American Medical Writers Association, American Marketing Association, The Society
for Technical Communication, etc.) are ready-made networks of like-minded professionals and thus are
great opportunities for making connections with other people in your field.

Also be aware, however, that expressing personal or private opinions or views (especially if potentially
controversial) can lead to negative impacts on your professional identity. There are ways to deal with this
through digital communication, such as keeping separate social media accounts for work and non-work
contacts, or utilizing social media settings to show or hide certain information to and from different groups
(family, friends, work contacts, etc.). When in doubt about a post or an email, think twice before posting
something online or sending that email until you get a second opinion. When dealing with in-person
situations, consider how much is appropriate to reveal about your personal views, and, when in doubt,
imitate the level of sharing that others around you seem to adopt.

Ultimately, workplaces and professional situations can be extremely diverse in how casual or formal they
are. It’s up to you to observe your workplace or professional setting and decide whether certain personal (or
workplace) views should be shared or not. Ultimately, it is always best to err on the side of sharing less
(especially early on in a job or an acquaintance when you are still figuring out what is the norm and what is
not). Additionally, if done tactfully and honestly, it can be a good idea to just ask a new coworker or
manager questions like: “What is the workplace culture here when it comes to sharing personal information
or views? Do people in this organization use social media to keep in contact?”

Building Relationships
Essential to relationship building and networking are the concepts of tone, audience, politeness/thanks,
and clarity.

        Tone: When communicating with individuals or groups in a professional setting, it’s critical to use a
friendly but appropriately formal tone. In certain workplaces or situations, a less formal tone may be
permissible but it is always smart to wait for those who are more experienced to let you know the
guidelines for this. When in doubt, be positive and observe the organizational culture in order to
discover how you fit into this culture and what kind of tone you should adopt for different audiences.

        Audience: Always be aware of those around you in a professional setting. Do not make assumptions
based on what you think others may or may not think. Always err on the side of caution and restraint.
Try to view situations and conversations from the point-of-view of the others who are around you. What
 stakes or interests do they hold in what is being done or discussed? How can helping them accomplish
their goals or tasks help you also accomplish your professional goals or the goals of your organization?
Coming across as selfish and overly focused on only your (or your organization’s) concerns may seem
tempting at first but is likely to turn off others with whom you may be working—thus doing long-term
damage to your reputation (ethos). Be aware as well that there are often multiple audiences for each
form of communication you use. Emails can be forwarded or replied to with audiences you didn’t
expect. Memos for people below you in an organizational hierarchy can find their way to your
supervisor. You may be originally communicating with one person, but be aware of who that person
may report to later. Also be aware of how and when communication becomes a matter of permanent
record (contracts, company reports, etc.) and thus may have far-reaching future audiences as well.

        Politeness/Thanks: Being polite and showing appreciation are foundational expectations in nearly all
business and professional environments. Seeming ungrateful or treating someone with poor manners is
not likely to be forgotten by that person. In fact, many times these instances become stories and even
lore that others pass on about you. Before you know it, you may get the unfounded reputation as an
unfriendly or ungrateful person that no one would like to work with. It’s true that all of us have bad days
or get caught up in our own work and forget to say thank you or express appreciation or to ask others if
they need help. But these can be critical mistakes, especially when they pile up over time. Remember to
act like the kind of professional that you would most want to interact with.

        Expressing gratitude and inquiring into the well-being of others is never a bad idea. Remember that this
extends to all situations and not just verbal conversations. Digital correspondence (like email or text
messaging) is also best delivered with a friendly tone. It’s true that you also want business
correspondence to be succinct and don’t ever want to waste the time of an audience, but manners can
always be balanced with brief and informative content.

        Clarity: You should also strive for clarity when building connections with an audience. Do not make
assumptions on the extent to which your audience may already know or understand what you are
writing about, unless you have direct evidence that they are up-to-speed. Of course, coworkers or
professional contacts may feel insulted if you explain things to them that they already know. This is why
clarity is best delivered with an optimistic, polite, and friendly tone (as discussed above). Even a simple
qualifying phrase, such as: “You may already be aware of this, but let me restate it here just in case you
aren’t …,” can go far toward showing your audience that you are thorough without being self-centered
or insulting. Remember that your coworkers and professional contacts are also very busy and are likely
to be juggling many tasks. If you come to them to discuss an issue, be sure to state the issue clearly and
to remind them the context of the issue before launching into details. With busy professionals, it is often
also essential to follow up after the fact if they don’t get back to you in a timely manner. As with
everything, these follow-up communications should be done with politeness and clarity.

Contextualizing Questions: Collaboration, Networking, and Building

Relationships
The following questions might help you discover the most effective way to build professional relationships:

What are strengths and weaknesses of each member of the team involved with a project and how can
these be balanced through the work of the team?
What social connections can you make between the people around you that will help them
collaborate and be productive?
How will you manage conflicts productively as a group?
Is your tone appropriate to the people around you that you are communicating with?
Do you understand the values and needs of the people who will see each piece of writing you produce,
whether that is a hard copy document or a social media post? Are you actively responding to those
values and needs?

Peer Review and Revision

Before a document reaches its final audience, it’s essential to vet that document with appropriate
audiences who can help point out what needs to be revised. These reviewers should be people you trust
who have the time and interest to help you improve a document. They can be coworkers, professional
contacts outside your organization, or even willing supervisors. Regardless, it is essential that every major
document you send to a final audience, whether it is an important email to a stakeholder or a report you’ve
worked months on, is reviewed by someone who isn’t an author of the document. People who are outside
of a given writing process frequently have insights that the writers themselves don’t.

Creating a peer review circle, or groups of workers that review each other’s writing, is simple:

1. The first stage of peer review should be to make sure that everyone involved with a given document
has signed off on it. This includes making sure everyone has seen the most current version, has added
anything they are responsible for adding, and agrees that the document should be sent out for peer
review.
2. Next, select peer reviewers who meet the above criteria (they are trustworthy and have the time and
interest to help you improve the document).
3. Send the document to reviewers in a format suitable for review. This can include sharing a Google
Document with them, for instance, or sending them a Word document with track changes turned on.
4. Ask reviewers to look at particular elements of your document (cover page, grammar, overall
organization, style, terminology). Never send a document out for review with no guidance for
reviewers. The best elements to direct reviewers to are those you are most concerned about.
5. Give reviewers a deadline for responding to your draft that is reasonable and thank them for their time.

Rhetorical Framework
Professional contexts like businesses, manufacturing plants, and non-profit and governmental
organizations depend on writing to solve problems, document processes, set expectations, understand
issues, communicate with other employees and stakeholders, and get work done. This is especially true in
professions that require a high degree of specialized training such as engineering, medicine, nursing,
accounting, and law. One way to prepare yourself for writing in any of these organizational or professional
contexts is through learning and applying the rhetorical framework we outline and discuss below. 

This framework asks you to consider a variety of rhetorical concerns including purpose; audience; ethics;
concerns with intercultural and risk communication; the effects of drafting processes; bias; document
design; the effects of privileges based on sex, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability; and more. 

The third part of the textbook asks you to apply this rhetorical framework and its theories to specific cases
that call for a variety of written documents. This will provide you with practice assessing a situation that
calls for some type of written communicative act and producing effective documents that address these
situations. This next section discusses the history of rhetoric and its relationship to writing in professional
contexts.

On the Relationships and Histories of Rhetoric and Professional Writing

You may wonder why a textbook that focuses on professional writing would focus on rhetoric when popular
uses and characterizations of rhetoric often refer to it as “empty language” or “manipulation.” Especially
during presidential election years or times of unrest, you may hear phrases like, “turn down the rhetoric” or
“what he says is just rhetoric.” Unfortunately, these popular definitions disregard centuries of rhetorical
education and practice. The term rhetoric originated from the ancient Greek thinkers like Socrates, Aspasia,
Plato, and Aristotle. Aristotle defined rhetoric “as the faculty of observing in any given case the available
means of persuasion.”

Modern scholars tend to focus on Western rhetorical theories (especially Greco-Roman) and apply those
theories to contemporary writing situations. Recently, however, rhetoric scholars have uncovered rhetorical
theories from a variety of non-Western or underrepresented cultures, both ancient and modern. These
include Black, Egyptian, Native American, Chinese, feminist, and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
and queer) communication traditions that call for continuing critical approaches to rhetoric studies
and rhetorical practices (Alexander and Rhodes; Crowley and Hawhee; Glenn; Haas; Hallo and Van Dijk;
Jarratt and Ong; Kirkland and Xu; Lipson and Binkley).

As a modern academic discipline, rhetoric arose in the late 20th century within the field of English studies
as a way to examine not only persuasion, but also meaning-making practices within writing situations.
Writing in the workplace and other professional contexts thus falls within the boundaries of rhetoric, and its
history is important to contemporary application in professional contexts. The tools developed by scholars
and practitioners of rhetoric can help you meet the needs of your audience in any situation that calls for
communication. 

Most importantly, a thorough understanding of rhetorical principles and their application can prepare you
to create effective documents that work for your business without relying on templates or examples that
were created in different circumstances and may be misleading or confusing when taken out of context.
The foundation to any discussion of rhetoric and professional writing begins with the components common
to contexts that call for some type of communication. We refer to these components collectively as the
rhetorical situation and they include the writer, and the writer’s audience, purpose, context, genres
(or forms of writing), and methods of delivery (or ways writing gets to an audience). Writers thus have a
number of theoretical tools they can use in order to communicate effectively, tools we delve more closely
into below.

Rhetorical Situations
There are two predominant theories of the rhetorical situation, or any situation that calls for a written
response. The scholar Lloyd Bitzer claims that rhetorical situations such as emails, requests to build
websites, and research projects call for specific types of communication based on exigence (need),
audience, and constraints or limitations. In other words, Bitzer argues that context is the most important
consideration when crafting a response to a specific situation. You respond to an email differently based on
what the sender needs, who they are, and any limitations you have (such as a time crunch or deadline for
responding).

Alternatively, Richard Vatz views any communication act as situated with writers and the communication
decisions they make. These decisions enable writers to make meaning within the situation or context at
hand. He would argue that what’s important when responding to an email is who you are, in other words,
why you are responding to the email, and what decisions you need to make when writing your response.

For the purposes of this book and writing professional contexts, we combine these viewpoints and
recognize that the writer makes communication choices and decisions based on the context, purpose, and
audience while the context also dictates the audience, purpose, and approach that needs to be considered. 

Using all the elements of the rhetorical situation (writer, purpose, audience, context, genre, and methods of
delivery) in this contextualized way will help you identify the important components of the situation and
generate the content needed to deliver your persuasive and effective message.

Writer

        As a writer, you might refer to yourself as speaker, presenter, creator, or designer, depending on what
type of document you are producing. A writer needs to consider all of the components of a writing
situation to decide both what to write and what form the message should take. For example, a human
resources manager is responsible for writing employee manuals and workplace policies that govern
how employers and employees relate to one another. Public relations specialists and lawyers routinely
write letters to customers regarding product recalls.

        It is important to reflect on and clearly define the parameters of who you are as a writer and whom you
could reasonably be considered to represent when distributing a document. In many cases you will not
only be speaking for yourself, but also representing your company or department. Your writing should
 clearly signal which of these is the case as a way of indicating who is responsible for the content of your
document.

        In your writing, you will want to incorporate the modes of persuasion (discussed below) to establish
credibility with your audience. Human resource managers, lawyers, public relation specialists and other
types of experts signal that they are experts to an audience with particular kinds of language from their
respective fields. This includes the use of particular terms, types of evidence, and the display of
particular types of values through the overall structure of their writing.

        Writers must also reflect on biases (discussed above) related to the topic at hand and must understand
how these opinions might impede or help meet audiences’ expectations. Recognizing and
acknowledging any biases you have in relationship to your audience also helps establish your
credibility. Professionals like those discussed above are frequently required to create confidentiality
agreements or conflict of interest reports to disclose to their stakeholders any biases they may have.

Purpose

        Writers in professional contexts have many purposes, some of which include: to inform, document,
argue, entertain, amuse, persuade, propose, instruct, explain, recommend, or call to action. Most writers
have a primary purpose and several secondary ones as well. For example, corporations publish annual
reports in which they declare the previous year’s finances and project the company’s future success for
current stockholders and future investors. These documents focus both on the past and the future and
are used to inform, document, and persuade. However, some documents you may be asked to create
will govern how certain people are treated, and a primary purpose of a document can get lost if the
secondary purpose takes precedent. Informed consent documents are used to inform participants
about something that could happen during a medical procedure, but they are also used to make sure
hospitals, doctors, nurses, etc. aren’t held liable if something bad happens. Analyzing the purpose of a
needed document and its possible effects is an important step in any writing situation.

Audience

        As a writer, you should always have in mind a group of people for whatever documents you produce. In
a specific writing situation, such as a report needed by a coworker or supervisor, you will likely have a
clearly defined group of people that need to use, understand, and/or act on your writing. If this is a
report that needs to be posted online to a password-protected company website, the report may need
to be utilized by hundreds of people from all over the globe.

        In general, you should try to find out as much as possible about the groups of people or stakeholders
you are writing for as early in the writing process as possible. You should try to understand their values
and needs so you can write to meet the needs of your audiences. Start by defining a specific primary
audience that is the target for the writing you are producing. Then articulate any secondary audiences
for your writing that may access it a well. Make a list of all their needs and values and try to line up as
 many of them as possible. One way to discover an audience’s needs and values is through participatory
design or user-testing, which is discussed later in this section. We use the term stakeholders to make
clear that certain audiences have a specific interest or concern in what gets communicated, how
something gets communicated, and who is affected by the communication.

        Risks are potential or actual dangers that people encounter in everyday life. These may include dangers
to their lives, reputations, jobs, health, and more. When we engage in communication of any kind, we
may encounter or even create a variety of risks—some of which we may not even know we’re dealing
with. We must do our best to be aware of risks in the contexts in which we’re writing and to mitigate
their potential effects for ourselves and our stakeholders.

        Stakeholders are the people who are potentially affected by the things we, as communicators, do. In
other words, they’re the people who are exposed to the risks associated within a given situation. If we’re
writing about the potential side effects of a new drug, they’re the people who will be taking the drug,
and the people who are manufacturing the drug. They’re also the people who own the drug company,
the retailers who distribute the drug, and the medical professionals who prescribe it. In other words,
communication acts always have a lot of stakeholders and—as such—they require careful attention and
significant work to make sure the needs and values of these stakeholders are respected.

Context

        Writing and communication occurs in historical, cultural, political, personal, and/or professional
contexts. The ancient Greeks referred to the context for communicating as kairos—the concept of
timeliness or adapting communication to current conditions. Context can also refer to the need, setting,
or occasion that calls for the writing to occur.

        The specific context of any writing situation will help dictate what and how writing is produced. This can
include the conventions—or generally agreed-upon characteristics of writing, which can change over
time—that govern both how a document is designed and how an audience will likely behave in
response to this document. Remember, also, that context itself changes over time and will influence the
way that you, as the writer, form your document as well how it is interpreted by the audience.

        To consider context, think about the setting in which the written document might be read or used and
the timeliness of your topic. Consider the audience members that are both included and excluded by
the specific context where your writing is needed or will be used. It is generally a bad idea, for example,
to write a product recall that will appear in the mail months after someone has purchased a product.
Product recalls need to be distributed as soon as a product is known to be faulty or dangerous, and
needs to reach consumers as quickly as possible. Consumers who continue to use a faulty product and
are harmed by this use often have legitimate grounds for a lawsuit that could cost the organization
you’re working for millions of dollars.

Genres and Delivery

        You will also need to decide what form, or genre, your writing will take. You are probably most familiar
with genres like fiction, poetry, plays, and essays, but genres can include any kind of documents that
follow a set of conventions (agreed-upon characteristics) familiar to the audience that will use or read
your document. This can include marketing emails, quarterly reports, memos of understanding, cover
letters for job applications, news websites, grant proposals, press releases, and brochures. The other
elements of the rhetorical situation (writer, purpose, audience, and context) should help dictate the
form of your writing and the specific conventions it should follow.

        Keep in mind that audiences and stakeholders have expectations for what they read, depending upon
the occasion in which they read it. Someone looking at a list of product rebates or recalls in the lobby of
a grocery store will have different expectations than someone reading a list on a website or via email.

        Writers in professional contexts usually have a set of genres central to their responsibilities. For
example, those working in the health professions document the progress of their patients in charts and
records using technical language or terms that only others working in their field understand. However,
when communicating with their patients or caregivers directly, these professionals write handouts or
discharge instructions in a language more accessible to their audience. Marketing and finance
professionals make use of reports, spreadsheets, graphs, and charts to share information with each
other, but when they communicate with readers outside their professions, these internal documents are
usually translated into bullet points containing clear, simple action items.

        Specific professional contexts call for their employees to use specific genres to communicate with each
other and with their specific stakeholders. It’s always smart to ask if an organization you work with has
specific example of the documents you’re being asked to write. Analyzing examples is one way to learn
about the expectations for writing within a specific context and for specific stakeholders.

Contextualizing Questions: Rhetorical Situations

The following questions will help you assess a new rhetorical situation you are entering:

Who are the people involved with the actual production of documents? What are their roles? Who will
be doing what?
What are the specific activities associated with this writing process? What are all the types of work that
need to get done?
What are the reasons each of these people are involved with this writing process? What is each of them
here to do? What are their values and needs?
Who are the people that will be the recipients or stakeholders of the documents produced? What are
their values and needs?
What specific situation is calling for the documents that need to be written? What are historical,
cultural, political, personal, or professional factors influencing the documents that need to be written?
What specific forms of writing or types of documents (genres) need to be produced? What is each
genre called and what are specific expectations or conventions associated with that type of
document?
 How will each form of writing actually reach its intended audience? What communication channel will
it utilize (e.g., email body, email attachment, hard copy, social media, website content, etc.)?
What technologies will be needed to make sure the writing is delivered effectively to its audience?

Process-Based Writing
You may already be familiar with what we call the ‘process-based model of writing’ and you may have your
own process for writing that includes all or some of the following steps. If you’re not familiar, then try using
this writing process as you approach one or more of the cases you’ll encounter in this book.

Pre-writing and invention includes strategies for coming up with a topic and/or organizing your thoughts.
Since you will likely begin any business communication project with a specific goal in mind, the important
elements of pre-writing will include evaluating your audience(s) and their needs in a given situation,
considering the context of the situation and the best way to represent your company within that context,
and clearly defining your purpose in writing the document to make sure that your finished product meets
your goals.

Drafting and arrangement refers to the creation of a rough or initial version of the product you hope to
create. This is usually the step in your writing process where you may want to have one or more people
review your work. This review often provides you with insight you can incorporate during the next step of
the process. In a business writing scenario, you will often need to show drafts to clients or colleagues to
make sure that the document you are working on fulfills their goals for the project and is useable for
everyone involved.

The revision and editing processes give you space to take this feedback into account. Reconsidering the
document to make sure it has been organized and presented in the best light for your intended audience
happens during the revision process, where you are thinking about big-picture concerns and likely making
significant changes to the organization, presentation or style of your document. Editing, which happens
later, includes checking that you have followed required conventions for the purpose and audience, that
your document is polished and appears professional, and perhaps your plans for storing the documents.

Distribution and delivery ask you to consider the best outlet and format for your intended audience. While
you will need to have considered your distribution plans for the document often throughout your
composing process, this is the stage at which you put those plans into practice. At this point, it is important
to review the ways in which your means of distribution and delivery will influence the audience(s) who
access your document and how they perceive it.

Because each part of this process feeds on each other part, you may go through this process or parts of the
process several times while working on a single document.

Modes of Persuasion
Along with the elements associated with a rhetorical situation, writers have three specific appeals they
should consider in their communicative actions. As you consider context, audience, and purpose in your
writing, the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos—as defined by rhetorical scholars—become
important in persuading audiences. Some texts depend on one primary form of appeal. For example, a
Hallmark commercial usually focuses on appealing to the emotions of the audience, relying on pathos
primarily. However, the majority of effective communication relies on all three.

The modern term ethics stems from ethos. Ethos generally applies to the character and authority of the
communicator. In order to establish ethos or credibility, the speaker or writer may need to perform due
diligence. By carrying out necessary topical research and citing relevant evidence, writers or speakers can
more easily illustrate their expertise in communicating their messages. Thus, the audience will more readily
receive the speaker as an authority on the subject matter. If you are not seen as credible, then your
audience may not be persuaded by what you have to say.

Pathos, the root of the modern words sympathy and pathetic, is associated with emotion and involves
seeking the best way to influence members of a particular audience to action. Using this appeal helps
writers convince audience members to at least sympathize with the emotions expressed in the writing, if not
to empathize with, or share these emotions. Often times, appeals based on pathos include addressing
human emotions, wants, and needs. Emotional appeals can be a very effective way to persuade audiences
in the right context for the certain purposes.

Logos refers to appeals made to logical reasoning using words and evidence. In certain situations logos is
privileged as the most persuasive. Classical interpretations also include diction and organization. The way
you organize your writing and the tone you use also affects an audience’s view of how logical you are. This
can include the types of claims you make about particular elements of the writing context (e.g., summaries,
paraphrases, interpretations, arguments, etc.). It can also include what kinds of evidence are appropriate for
the writing situation (e.g., information from particular kinds of sources, survey or interview data you’ve
collected yourself, statistics, facts, quotes, etc.). A writer will more successfully appeal to the needs and
desires of their audience by using the specific language or conventions expected by the audience.
Organization and style are important in moving an audience to action, understanding, or agreement. In this
sense, logos pertains to logic as well as style.

Contextualizing Questions: Modes of Persuasion

The following questions will help you learn how to be persuasive in a specific rhetorical situation using all
three of the appeals:

How do you establish credibility (or ethos) as a writer in this situation? What types of information are
privileged by your audience? What types of expertise do you need to display?
What emotions (pathos) are appropriate in this situation and will be most appealing to your audience?
How do you depict these emotions in a compelling way (e.g., visually, through a personal anecdote,
through a description of an injustice, through a call-to-action directed at your audience, etc.)?
 What types of logical reasoning (logos) do you need to make use of in this situation? What kinds of
claims do you need to make about particular elements of the writing context (e.g., summaries,
paraphrases, interpretations, arguments, etc.)? What kinds of evidence are appropriate for the writing
situation (e.g., information from particular kinds of sources, survey or interview data you’ve collected
yourself, statistics, facts, quotes, etc.)?
What types of specific images can you use that will be persuasive your audience?

Document Design and Delivery

Delivery is one of the five rhetorical canons. (Remember those? They’re invention, arrangement, style,
memory, and delivery.) Delivery is the method by which a message gets to its audience. Delivery isn’t just
form, though; effective delivery takes context into account as well. For example, the news that you’re being
offered a new job is more likely to be delivered over the phone than through email because of its
importance and level of formality. In addition, some messages are more complex than a single point of
delivery allows; in this case, rhetorical velocity (Ridolfo and DeVoss) describes the ability of a message to
move through different media over time. For example, a scientific article heralding a new discovery might
be translated into a press release and then into a news article.

Document design is one of the most important considerations when preparing to deliver a text-based
message. Document design ensures aesthetic appeal and thus that the intended audience actually wants to
pick up (or click on) and read the document. Designers commonly use a four-part acronym to analyze how
well a document is designed. This acronym is CRAP, which reminds designers to pay attention to Contrast,
Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. For a more detailed accounting of this approach, check out Robin
Williams’ (2008) The Non-Designer’s Design Book.

For example, this image (Figure 1) makes use of contrast by utilizing light and dark colors in combination.
Because of the dark border and letters on the light background, contrast makes the document easily
readable. In addition, the main image (the guitar) contrasts with the text through its use of color; while the
rest of the document is in gray tones, the blue guitar is emphasized. Contrast in text size is used to show
what elements are most important. Repetition is present in a number of ways; most importantly, the
choice of typeface is consistent throughout the document. Text also repeatedly appears in capital letters.
The poster’s alignment centers the most important text. Some of the text runs vertically to add visual
interest; this is also an example of where alignment and contrast (between horizontal and vertical text) work
in concert. Some designers might critique the use of right aligned text for the band names since this traps
white space on the left side of that block of text. It’s always better to allow white space to run off the page or
serve as a border, as the white space around the main graphic does in this image. The poster’s designers
used proximity to group like information. That is, the band names are all grouped together because they
are similar in content. The time and date are grouped together because they both give information about
when to view the show.
 Figure 1. Example of contrast

We can analyze a variety of different elements according to the CRAP principles in this image (Figure 2). Pick
any one of the elements it depicts, or consider the whole document, and try it yourself using this table
(Table 1) to guide you.

Figure 2. Example of CRAP principles

Table 1. CRAP Principles

What elements contrast in the above

document? Do you see contrasting
Contrast typefaces, colors, sizes? How do these
contrasts affect your reading of the
document?
Repetition What elements are repeated in the above
 document? Do you see consistency in sizes,
colors, shapes, or themes? How does
repetition help you to make sense of the
information?
How do different elements above align
information? Does this attract your
Alignment
attention? Does it facilitate easier reading?
What might you change?
The individual elements in the above
graphic all exist in proximity to each other.
Proximity
What does this tell you? How does proximity
work in those individual elements?

Digital Content Strategies and Technologies

Social Networking, Social Media, and Social Entrepreneurship
As discussed above in the section on Intercultural Communication and Globalization, businesses are
becoming increasingly global in scope; Internet technologies are also driving businesses to become more
and more social. Thus, effective professional social networking is more important than ever before.

Social networking is the act of building relationships between people with similar interests. Social
networks are often formed on the basis of geographical location, devotion to certain causes, and
engagement in similar hobbies. The 2010 movie, The Social Network, describes the birth and development
of Facebook, one of the most successful digital social networking mediums. Increasingly, social networking
platforms are used to build connections for professional purposes. You may initially become friends with
someone based on your shared love of dachshunds, but that person may later be in a position to offer you a
job or initiate a crucial professional introduction.

Social technologies like social media extend the impact of our communications across the Internet. Some
examples of social media include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, and LinkedIn. These are
all Internet-based software applications that thrive on user-generated content and networking. New social
media are born every day, and each has its own particular culture and users. Since businesses and
organizations are increasingly using social media to promote themselves and connect with clients, it is very
important for new professionals to be literate in the use of social media. This means engaging with a variety
of different media both for networking (for more information on this, flip to the section on Networking
below) and for practice in developing marketable skills.

While developing an understanding of individual social media platforms is important, young professionals
and job-seekers should also think about how these media interact. One of the most important things a
business or organization can do for its professional image is to organize a social media strategy—and the
same goes for building your own individual web presence. Similar to (and sometimes part of) a content
strategy or communication strategy, a social media strategy is a guide for ensuring that quality content gets
to the right networks in a timely manner. Having a strategy is vital because with networks like Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram come millions of potential stakeholders who can be reached at very low
cost. These stakeholders expect to be able to interact with organizations in complex new ways.

A lot of tools exist to help organizations manage social media content and to build a network of potential
stakeholders who are interested in what they have to say. Here’s a very basic template we’ve developed for
creating such a strategy that is lightweight and easy to navigate for both individuals and organizations:

Goals
Market myself to companies in telecommunications
Emphasize my skills with social media

Keep up on trends in social media and communications

To Do
Every Day

Post at least three new items to Twitter (see “Social Media” below)

Every Week

Update LinkedIn (see “Social Media” below)

Post at least one new entry to Tumblr (see “Social Media” below)

Update Facebook (see “Social Media” below)

Every Month

Update website (see “Social Media” below)

Update professional organization profiles

Re-evaluate professional goals

As Needed

Update professional organizational profiles (see “Prof Org Profiles” below)

Professional Organization Profiles

ATTW
 URL: x
Username: x
Password: x

NCTE

URL: x
Username: x
Password: x

Phi Kappa Phi

URL: x
Username: x

Password: x

Social Media
Twitter

Username: x
Password: x
What to do: Check connect button and direct messages, reply to any responses, follow people

LinkedIn

URL: x
Username: x
Password: x
What to do: Endorse people for skills, write recommendations, connect to new people, follow-up on
potential opportunities

Tumblr

URL: x
Username: x
Password: x
What to do: Make sure queue has at least 12 posts in it, reply to any messages, follow people

Facebook

URL: x
Username: x
Password: x
 What to do: Add people to friends lists, respond to messages, search groups of interest to me

Wordpress Website

URL: x
Username: x
Password: x
Hosting: Domain registrations set to auto-renew in June of each year
What to do: Review homepage meta-description, review site organization, update “About Me” page,
check other pages for necessary updates

As you engage in social networking, craft your social media presence, and practice for managing the social
media presence of a business, you also must take into account social responsibility. Social responsibility
is the idea that individuals and businesses have an obligation to work for the good of society at large. This
notion suggests that your ultimate goal must be in line with your personal moral compass. For example, if
you work for a pharmaceutical company and you discover that a batch of medication has been
contaminated, you would have to choose between covering up the problem so as to protect the company’s
profits and making the problem public in order to protect the company’s customers (the product’s end
users). Most social responsibility advocates would argue that making the problem public both protects
customers and demonstrates good ethos (see the section above on the Modes of Persuasion). Thus, social
responsibility is often in line with long-term benefits for a company.

The idea of social responsibility has also given rise to the idea of a social business. This term describes
organizations that are cause-driven rather than profit-driven, and that invite investors to forgo immediate
returns in order to create greater impacts on social causes. To learn more about social business, visit
YunusCentre.org (http://www.muhammadyunus.org) and conduct an analysis of how this organization uses
the term social business—and how it uses social media to promote its ideas.

Market Research
Market research refers to the process of collecting information related to a business’s concerns for the
purposes of improving workplace goals and/or profits. An important characteristic of most contemporary
market research is the collection of qualitative data in addition to quantitative data. In this context,
qualitative data means how clients or customers feel about products, services or image and the stories they
tell themselves and others about brand and image. Quantitative data refers to the raw numbers associated
with a company (for example, number of sales per year, or amount of clients in a client database). Those
doing market research for a company are concerned with overall client experience as it relates to the
company or brands, taking special care not to think of or treat clients as simply a means to a profit.

Market research is often used to locate current trends and interests among an organization’s clients. It often
focuses on target client/audience demographics (for example: age, gender, racial and ethnic background,
income-level, language preferences, social habits, etc.). Additionally, market research looks at
client/customer values and beliefs about possible directions an organization could or should take. There
are several methods for conducting market research. Some examples include:

Comparative analyses: Focus on the practices and marketing of close competitors in relation to the
business.
Surveys: Questionnaires or sets of questions that are used to get a sense of the demographics of a
given market, and/or general preferences of stakeholders within that market.

Interviews: Used to gain in-depth narratives, preferences, and perceptions from selected or pre-
screened individuals.
Focus groups: Used to gain in-depth narratives, preferences, and perceptions from randomized groups
of individuals. These are often ideal for brand testing.

To conduct market research, it’s important to create a “research instrument,” or protocol for gathering data.
What this instrument looks like will depend on the type of data you need to collect (which depends itself on
the type of marketing issues you are trying to resolve). In constructing a research instrument, you may ask:

Stories: Do you need to understand the history of a given business process? Or the relevance it has for
current stakeholders? Do you need to understand stakeholder perceptions of the process? Or their
preferences for how the process is carried out?
Best practices: Do you need to find innovative solutions for developing a certain process or improving
an existing one? Where is the most pertinent information on this kind of process? Who are the most
cutting-edge people working with these processes and what are they doing?
Worldviews: Do you need to understand where a particular stakeholder is coming from, and why
they’re making the choices they’re making before you can move forward? How do cultural and
regional considerations affect these views and choices?
Examples: Do you need example documents, templates, or other materials to show a particular
stakeholder in order to convince them of something or get their opinion?
Decision points: Do you have multiple options before you and are unsure how to proceed? If so, you
might need to put forth the options you have before you to your stakeholders to get them to share
some of the cognitive load.
Buy-in: Are you struggling with one or more stakeholders who are resistant to doing anything at all? Are
you experiencing a personality conflict? How can you interact with folks who are acting as obstacles so
that they feel like part of the project, but don’t sabotage or set back the project?
Engagement: Are you dealing with a lack of overall interaction or investment level with one or more
stakeholders? Do you need to motivate them with new or original ideas or to reassure them a bit so
you can do your work?

Your first task to generate a Research Findings Report for your client is to use a Market Research Instrument
to collect some data. Your Research Instrument should be ready to utilize, so you can use it to collect
desired data—as much as you can get in one sitting (e.g., a focus group or interview, an event, etc.).

Next, you’ll need to analyze the data you’ve collected by looking for patterns within it. Ask yourself:
 What similarities did you notice between participants?
What differences did you notice?
Did different participants answer different questions in radically different or very similar ways?
Was your data very homogenous (a lot of the responses were the same) or heterogeneous (responses
varied widely)?
What clusters of similarity/difference can you note (i.e., are there distinct groups of participants that
responded in particular ways)?

If identified patterns are consistent throughout your data (meaning that you feel they are representative of
the entire data set), then they can become research claims. To make a research claim, you:

State what pattern you saw represented in your data

Provide concrete evidence (excerpts or examples from your collected data) to back up that claim
Provide your own interpretation of why this pattern exists in your data

The most important thing you can do during this process is not jump to hasty or rash conclusions. Research
is always messy. If all you find is what additional data you need to collect (or that you need additional data),
you’ve still accomplished something important.

A general template for a Research Report would include:

Executive summary: This answers the basic questions, what did you find, and why should people care
about what you found? What do your findings say about the project you’re working on? What do they
not say? What needs further research?
Analysis: Gives a concise but complete breakdown of all the patterns you observed in your data.
Recommendations: What do these patterns indicate for the project you’re working on? What should be
the next steps you take, based on these findings?

Website Content Audits

Performing Content Audits

Content audits are another way for professional writers to audit, or assess, the currency, reliability, and
overall effectiveness of information. You can perform a content audit on a website, a document, or various
other media (digital and non-digital). Here is a sample heuristic for conducting a content audit:

1. Create a spreadsheet to capture the information and list the following columns (each page or section
should then have its own row): what’s there (all content), what’s effective (best content), what’s
outdated (less usable content), what’s ineffective (unnecessarily complicated content),
stylistic/consistency issues (headings, bullets, grammar, font, image sizes, etc.).

1. Read through all pages or sections for categories you’ve identified and make notes in your
spreadsheet.
 2. Make recommendations for updates to content, based on these notes and spreadsheets.

Once you have performed your content audit (which can be a time-consuming process as some
organizations’ websites have hundreds of pages), you can begin to develop strategies for updating and
maintaining content with your organization. A document that lists these strategies in an organization is
usually called a Content Strategy or Communication Strategy.

The following are some things to consider as you begin a content strategy document:

Mission: what is the overall mission of the organization, and how does it relate to the specific content
you are creating?
Findings: how will your document represent findings from your market research?
Purpose: how will your strategy represent the purpose of the content you are preparing?
Audience: how will your strategy respond to the needs of your client as an audience, but also to the
needs of their clients as a secondary audience?

Content types: what specific types of content will you be delivering and how will your Content Strategy
Document represent these content types (i.e., instructions, status updates, static content, blog posts,
tweets, descriptions, graphics, photographs, video, audio, requests for action or funds, emotional
appeals, stories, etc.)?
Channels of distribution: what specific channels will your content be delivered through and how will
your Content Strategy Document represent these channels (i.e., paper deliverables from organization,
newspaper, radio, television, face-to-face, email, telephone, newspaper, website, social media, mobile,
hand-held device, etc.)?
Sustainability: how will your document teach your client about the processes you’ve used so they can
replicate what you’ve done?

Usability and Accessibility

To ensure that the documents and websites you create are usable and accessible, it is essential to test them
before they go live or are printed for publication. The process of testing usability is very different from
submitting documents to an editorial team to proofread (although proofreading is also an important
practice). Usability testing ensures that documents are intuitive, accessible, and readable for “end users.”
End users are the people who will actually be using the document when it is complete. The best usability
testers recruit people who are actual potential users of a document and then incorporate those users’
opinions into the design of the text.

One tool that might be useful in making sure your website is accessible is the Website Accessibility
Evaluation Tool (http://wave.webaim.org/), where you can have your website evaluated to make sure it’s
accessible to your users.

Usability tests should be conducted as soon as a prototype (that is, a functional first draft) of a document is
available. These are sometimes called beta and this step is referred to as beta-testing. The earlier you do
usability testing, the better chance you have of producing an initial draft that is usable. Early usability
testing helps you to be efficient with your time and energy.

Here’s an example of how to conduct a basic usability test on a simple document:

1. Pick 3-5 test users that match the demographics of the target audience as closely as possible.

1. Create a set of instructions for testers to follow as they use the product. Use simple, task-based
directions like “find this piece of information,” “navigate to the page for x,” or “figure out how you
would engage in y process.”
2. Have the testers try to accomplish these tasks.
3. Observe the testers’ behavior and take notes on what they struggle with.
4. Ask users about their experiences using the document, including what was the easiest/most intuitive
and what was the most difficult/taxing.

When usability testing is complete, you have plenty of information to develop ideas about how to revise the
document so that it is more useable in the future. Depending on the product, you may conduct many
rounds of usability testing.

More about usability testing can be found via http://www.usability.gov. It may also be helpful to view a
sample usability test in action by professional usability consultant and web designer Steve Krug:
http://youtu.be/QckIzHC99Xc.

Citing Practices in Professional Communication Contexts

You most likely have experience with some of the citation styles that are commonly used in academic
writing—MLA, APA, and Chicago. While these styles are often taught to students as a part of their writing
curriculum, it is important to recognize that they, like all other citation styles, serve a practical purpose.
Namely, they are intended as a kind of shorthand to help members of a given discipline to credit and
identify sources as a way of engaging in a conversation with one another. Regardless of discipline, most
citation styles include the same basic information, like author’s name, date of publication, title, etc. For
example, APA prioritizes the date of publication after the author’s name because current research matters in
scientific disciplines while MLA puts the date closer to the end of long-form citations because it is less
important when discussing literature.

This same logic applies to citing outside sources in a business setting. Just as scientists and
Shakespeareans have developed their own citation styles based on their disciplinary needs, businesses
often create their own citation styles specific to their organization and audience needs, if they have any
formalized citation style at all. Remember, academic integrity and business ethics both require giving
proper credit to sources.

Exported for Susan Cox on Wed, 19 Jan 2022 12:54:39 GMT