Professional Writing – Page 5

The Professional Writer’s Path to Graduate School

By Andrew Faustmann

screenshot of a google search for professional writing graduate programs — Looking for graduate schools

Many students attend graduate school to further concentrate their skills and knowledge for their future career; however, not every school is going to have the curriculum that supports your personal goals. So, instead of wasting two years of school and several thousand dollars, make sure to research each school carefully before applying.

Where Should You Attend?

When searching school programs that will further your professional writing skills, you need to be aware of the various names for each program. A majority will either be called “Rhetoric and Composition” or “Technical and Professional Writing.” However, you will sometimes find the term “Communication” instead of “Writing.”

This process is quite similar to searching for a job, so persistence is key. Depending on your proximity of school searches, the website Gradschools.com may be of assistance for a more national search. If you are restricted to only a handful of localized schools, you can jump straight to each school’s website.

You may want to look for a school that employs professors who share a similar background to your own. Many professors typically had or still have jobs as a professional writer with a corporation. This will open up networking opportunities and also knowledge from first-hand experience.

Go to the faculty page on the English department’s website and rummage through all of the professor’s profiles.

Typically, most professors will provide a short bio, recent courses, relevant publications and even their own website, but you may even have to dig a little deeper. You can either email those professors directly or research their names in scholarly databases, such as CompPile, JSTOR, or Proquest.

While specific areas of research may not be 100% relevant to your career pursuits, their individual research will inform you more of their academic and professional interests, which will help you decide on the most suitable courses.

What Financial Assistance Do Graduate Schools Offer?

Many schools offer financial support in the form of assistantships, scholarships and conference funding.

The assistantship typically includes full tuition remission and a stipend to survive on while you complete your degree in two years—unfortunately, the stipend typically ranges from $8,000 to $15,000 per year. While each school has different programs set up, you could be working for the school as a tutor, research assistant and/or teaching assistant. This opportunity not only allows you to receive a fully-funded education but also to gain experience working at the university.

The assistantship is not for everyone, as a great full-time job is not to be given up lightly. In this case, many English departments and graduate schools offer scholarships to assist with the cost of tuition.

It is also encouraged that you present at conferences related to your field of study. Even though conferences are directed towards those who wish to publish academic research, the experience gained from presenting is transferable to any workplace. When contemplating this, see if the schools offer conference funding for travel costs.

Go Start Applying

Pursuing a graduate degree to advance your success as a professional writer is a great decision, yet you must make sure that the school you attend has a program that will help you build the skill set to achieve your goals.

Therefore, search for programs, professors and courses that will help advance your skills and knowledge while also noting the multiple options regarding how you are going to pay for that education.

Web Design for Creative Writers

Books on a computer — Building an online presence

By Jenna Summers

So you want to write a novel?

You imagine droves of fans lining up in a bookstore waiting for you to sign the crisp new copy of your book. But how will you let your future fans know about your book? This is where professional writing and online content comes in.

But You’re Creative! You Don’t Like That Boring Professional Stuff

Often, creative writing students overlook professional writing courses because they believe that professional writing is boring. In reality, professional writing includes a wide variety of outlets for creative expression including web design and the creation of online content that is complete with eye-catching designs and memorable titles. Not only is professional writing a different way to approach the written word but it is vital to the success of creative writers.

Okay. It’s Not Boring But Why Do You Need a Website?

Imagine that it is your near future. You have finished your first novel and it is brilliant. You are confident that this book will catapult you into international stardom. Then you realize that you do not have an audience and you have no way to build an audience. How will your adoring fans discover your book?

The best solution to this dilemma comes in the form of a website. By creating a website, you will be able to instantly reach an audience from around the world. For more information on the effectiveness of online content in marketing see Six Benefits of Internet Marketing.

Your website can also serve as an extension of your book. For example, it can include information about you as the author or it can even serve as a host for an online version of the first chapter of your book.

Some authors such as J.K. Rowling have even created extensions to their books online. Through Pottermore, Rowling is able to continuously add onto the world that she originally created in the Harry Potter books.

There are a nearly unlimited number of uses that your website can serve. It is only limited by your creativity and willingness to learn.

How Do You Learn to Design a Website?

Web design skills can be learned through a variety of online sources or through in-person classes. There are courses at UAB such as EH 455-Digital Publishing which are extremely helpful in cultivating web design skills.

A Word For All: Ethics, Usability and the Singular “They”

greeting sign with they/them/theirs pronouns — Inclusivity in professional writing

By Em Wiginton

In professional writing, audience dictates the language, form and content of every document. These considerations often bring up questions of ethics: how do we create the most usable, inclusive document for a certain set of people, and how can we make sure we are intertextually humanizing our readers?

At the intersection of ethics and usability in professional writing lies the issue of audience and gender—and more specifically, use of the singular “they.”

Much of the time, we use the singular “they” without even thinking about it—“Someone left their phone in class,” for example—but it has still met criticism based on the belief that it can only be used as a plural pronoun. Even my high school English teachers insisted that we use “he or she” in our academic papers, but where style and larger conversations about gender intersect, these standards are changing.

“They” and Ethics

Recent discourse has brought into question whether or not “they” can be used as a singular pronoun. However, as understanding about gender and inclusivity evolves, the use of “they” has become the best way of making sure you’re referring to everyone in your audience.

This made news in December 2015 when the Washington Post cited the singular they as the solution to the gender problem in writing. “They” includes every gender in a given audience, but also validates the existence of gender-neutral individuals, who may prefer “they” as their pronoun of choice.

“They” and Usability

The singular “they” is also the best option in terms of form. The APA Style Blog, which is the user-created counterpart to the style guide that many professional writers adhere to, suggests “they” instead of s/he, (s)he, he/she, or alternating use between he and she, as these can be awkward and distracting to the reader. The AP Stylebook has officially accepted the singular they, but the APA Style Guide has yet to change its standards on its use.

The Future of “They”

The failure of style guides to catch up with conversations about inclusivity and ethics raises an interesting dilemma: What exactly are writers to do when it comes to gender and audience?

Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness discusses how “biases can creep in when similarity and frequency diverge.” In other words, it can be easy to lump people into stereotypes and use non-inclusive wording, especially when style has yet to encourage otherwise. However, professional writing is, above all, a humanistic genre—one in which we must be activists and advocates for our users.

In all issues of audience gender, class, race and ableness, our writing should always be inclusive of and be usable by everyone.

Professional Writing for Individually Designed Majors

By Alexandria Smith

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock

As a student with an Individually Designed Major at UAB, I have specific career goals that required me to create my own course of study. I created the Cultural Communications major which combines Theater, English and Communications Studies. My ultimate goal is to do voiceovers for cartoons and write jingles for radio commercials.

While creating my curriculum, I thought it would be beneficial to add an edge to my coursework. This edge was provided through my professional writing classes.

From the Classroom

The Professional Writing program at UAB prepares students who have a desire to work with both print and digital formats. The professional writing program educates critical thinkers. Principles of rhetoric and language play a crucial role in academic, artistic, professional, personal and public settings. Having professional writing experience in the classroom provides me with skills that other majors might lack.

For example, in EH 315: Introduction to Professional Writing, my classmates and I created the brochure for the entire English Department. This is now the official brochure that is distributed to all freshmen upon entering orientation. Professional writing students learn the importance of:

Working in a team
Serving clients and customers
Exercising leadership
Negotiating
Dealing with diversity

To the Professional World

Professional writers have a wide range of other academic disciplines in the humanities, sciences and social sciences which makes them valuable. Through the professional writing program, I have learned how to communicate effectively to specific audiences, which is necessary in my future work. Writing jingles for radio commercials requires knowledge of the specific group you are trying to reach. My experience in the professional writing program has helped me focus on the audience I am trying to persuade so that I can convey my message clearly and effectively.

I’ve had the chance to work with multimodal presentations which allowed me to record my voice for a final presentation. Although it was not a silly cartoon, I still had the chance to do something that I love in a professional writing course.

Students with Individually Designed Majors should consider branching out while creating their curriculum. By including professional writing courses, I have learned valuable skills that I would lack if I did not participate in this program.

Finding Your Professional Identity In Fonts

By Jay Haywood

three examples of font — Convey the right message with your font choice

When transitioning from the academic to professional world, several decisions are made to ensure getting a job.

Accomplishments, work experience and internships are all compiled into résumés and adjusted to fit a potential career. However, a résumé should not just be a reflection of a person’s work history. The document should also reflect the identity of the person submitting it. Otherwise, your résumé will blend in with a stack of other listing similar education and work experience.

Reflecting academia, Times New Roman is an industry standard of typefaces. In terms of fonts, it is clean, concise, and professional. It is easy to read when formatted smaller and leads the eye easily when going through a document with lots of information on it. However, Times New Roman is also everywhere, which means that it can also be perceived as bland, unthoughtful and lazy.

Some people assume that they are expected to create their résumé in Times New Roman, partly because they wrote with the font for their entire college career. There are great alternatives to the font that will help identify you as an individual while still looking professional.

If you are looking to change your style but still want to stick close to traditional fonts, consider a font called Calisto MT, found within Microsoft Word. Stylistically it seems similar to Times New Roman, as it contains serifs, and is easy to read at a small typeface. However, the weight, or thickness, of Calisto MT is slightly heavier than Times New Roman, creating a layer of depth that is lacking in the latter.

If you are looking to branch out even more, consider a sans-serif font. Sans-serif fonts are regarded as clean and modern, and can definitely help a résumé stand out. I found a font called Lato on Google Fonts, a service provided for free through Google, that is an excellent choice. When compared to Times New Roman, Lato seems sleek and contemporary.

While both of these fonts are great examples, they may not represent you, and that’s fine! Browse the web to find a font that reflects you both personally and professionally.

Document Design: The Need for Attractive Documents

Andrew Atchison

In a society where an overload of visual information provides constant stimulation, attractive design is necessary in order to stand out. Billboards, advertisements, and personal brands should have a unique style to make them stand apart from the ordinary so they can sell products while still conveying the necessary information. Even a personal brand is essentially selling a person’s services or intelligence; résumés, curriculum vitae (CV), and personal statements hold vital information for an individual to be accepted into professional schools and even employment. According to a study published by The Ladders, admissions committees and employers often spend an average of six seconds viewing a resume! With this thought in mind, the important information these documents contain must be readily available and accessible in order for an individual to have an advantage over competition.
Document design should not be a daunting task. A few simple techniques can transform a document or advertisement from bland and ordinary to attractive and visually appealing. Keep in mind that design can easily be over done and the end product will not be effective.

Choose a typeface wisely. Don’t be compelled to use Times New Roman because professors require it for academic papers; it’s used so much in the academic world that it has become outdated. Any easy to read font will be sufficient for the body of the work.
Bold and underlined text is not the only way to make information appear important; use a different font for this information. Just make sure it works well with the other font.
Put information in places that make sense. An address in a résumé shouldn’t be contained in the personal skills section.
Use color(s). However, choose colors that work well with one another and make sure the product is still easy to read in color. Use a color wheel if choosing colors becomes a problem.

These are just a few techniques that can be used to make most documents stand apart from others, but there are many more. Just remember to try not to create ordinary and outdated documents because viewers will associate those qualities with the author’s personality.

The Versatility of Writing Skills

Although one can certainly attain many careers with a professional writing degree, the skills learned in professional writing courses are transferable to almost any professional or academic subject. A student will be required to complete multiple writing assignments during his or her academic career, and without any background in professional writing, these tasks could be daunting. The knowledge that can be gained from professional writing courses gives one the ability to achieve much more in other areas of study.

Success in most fields of study or profession can be heightened with a background of professional writing courses. Undergraduate courses in particular contain assignments that require writing. Many Ph.D. curricula demand enormous amounts of research and writing, but the degrees that these programs result in are all attainable as long as one has the ability to complete the coursework. With the knowledge gained in writing courses, the ability to accomplish higher educational endeavors can be heightened.

Having a major in professional writing does not restrict one to careers in the printing, editing, or even writing fields. Most professional spheres require some sort of writing skills, whether the task is technical, academic, or creative. Professional writers actually have a wide array of career opportunities to choose from. Majoring in professional writing should be more encouraged for aspiring professionals whether they plan to work in the writing sector or not.

The tools provided in writing courses are priceless. One cannot develop the ability to write without practice and training. Students with a degree or concentration in writing have a greater advantage than other future professionals in landing a job that requires any kind of writing. These students and future professionals, trained by the courses they have taken, have the “know-how” to get their jobs done efficiently and effectively. Writing skills are necessary in order to attain any job in a professional field. Communication among colleagues is of the utmost importance in maintaining a successful business, and professional writing enhances those skills.

The lack of a background in writing could be a major disadvantage in a student’s primary area of study. The skills learned in professional writing courses provide the abilities to write and to analyze and interpret other pieces of writing. These skills are necessary to not just students’ academic careers, but professionals’ survival in the area in which they choose to work as well. If students’ writing skills are high quality, many more opportunites are available to them. Success in the professional field is not guaranteed with a great amount of writing knowledge, but it is much more likely.

Blogging and the World of Professional Writing

By Stephanie Patrick

Blogging itself isn’t all that new of a medium. That is, it didn’t just burst from the ground one day after a major Pintrest trend hit Facebook. The concept of blogging, “web-logging” for those who dislike truncations, has floated around the Internet for as long as people could code HTML into forums. Its popularity has skyrocketed in the last decade, as the story-sharing platforms available to us have evolved more user-friendly tools and as companies, both small and large, are taking advantage of blogging’s marketing capabilities. In this age of the web, literally anyone can start a blog, and use it however they please—whether it’s to share personal diary entries, recipes, or to educate the public about a cause.

It can be argued that blogging is one of the most powerful journalistic writing tools on the Internet. For example, [Tumblr],(https://www.tumblr.com/) one of the most expansive blogging platforms on the Internet, can circulate original and reposted information before major news networks can even draft cue cards for the evening segments. News and media, from photography to audio to video, can travel in the blink of an eye to millions of users at once through simple publication tools. That’s why companies and organizations—such as, Modcloth (an increasingly popular vintage-style clothing site) and Den of Geek (a news source for all things nerdy)—take advantage of professional writing skills to craft expertly written articles for their multitude of site visitors and readers.

>“It’s becoming more of an imperative in the professional writing industry to understand blogs than a side hobby.”

Perhaps the most essential component of blogs that professional writers should seek to maximize is interaction potential. More often than ever, blogs are being designed like websites, with media packets, commentability, and links to outside sources. With these potential interactions, writers who freelance or even score employment gigs with major blogs can broaden their experience and further delve into the digital age. Eventually, the professional writer who hopes to accept a position with majorly popular magazines like Bon Appetit or Glamour is going to be evaluated on their ability to analyze crowd patterns and take their writing to the web, where more and more publications are spreading their branches.

Sites such as WordPress and Blogspot help writers build professional blogs with customizable layouts.

Limitless Potential

Not every blog for which professional writers are hired to write is a fashion, baking, or art blog, popular as they might seem. The University of Alabama at Birmingham has a blog archive that uses, for example, technical writers to assist the blogs in purveying school, research, and medical information to not only alumni and current students on the university’s circulation, but to the general public as well. With these blogs, you can keep up with the latest on a range of subjects, including Alys Stevenson Center information, The Sterne Library, and even the happenings of Study Abroad students.

On the other hand, blogging might be one of the most difficult media platforms to utilize for the budding professional writer. The success of blogs depends on visitor counts, commentary, and popularity measured in views, all of which require Search Engine Optimization (a specialty that can be difficult to master) and social media usage in order to spread the word about a blog or set of blogs. Blogs represent a third dimension of writing that includes interactive code, and more employers are looking for professional writers that aren’t afraid to dirty their pen-happy fingers with digital diligence.

It’s becoming more of an imperative in the professional writing industry to understand blogs than a side hobby; blogs have limitless potential, and some personal blogs can even house smart, interactive resumes and portfolios to showcase to employers. Many professional writers can use blogs to hone their writing skills and develop networking and connectivity that will boost their chances of becoming recognized in the vast blogging community.

Developing those previously mentioned Search Engine Optimization techniques can boost your popularity as well, and as those of us who frequent our favorite blogs know, popularity, content, and interactability can mean the difference between a passive hobby and a settled job for the professional writer.

Get the Most Out of Your Research

The Appointments with a Librarian program is designed for students to make appointments with librarians for more in-depth help with research and citation. This service offers two main types of consultations: research and citation. The important thing to note with these consultations and clinics is that they are absolutely free tools for students to use. Some students have a tough time trying to traverse through all of what UAB has to offer and it can be hard to filter out the right information that one needs.

Delores Carlito is the instruction coordinator for the Appointments with a Librarian program held within UAB’s Sterne Library. Ms. Carlito interpreted this phenomenon as “information overload” and students take all this information as “white noise.” This program seeks to bridge this gap between students and services and create what Ms. Carlito called a reliance on a “point of need.” This program is designed with the student in mind and acts as a catalyst connecting students with resources they need. It is built for the individual; it is tailored for your specific needs. Appointments are easy to make, offer specialists in most academic fields and disciplines, encompass most citation styles, and are available seven days a week. The only stipulation on this program is that the librarians require that appointments are requested twenty-four hours before the appointed time in order for them to gather the needed information and resources. “This gives ample time for the librarian to get the student what he or she needs,” said Ms. Carlito.

Now, for the up and coming professional writer, this program may not seem to meet the demanding needs of the working world and the professional writing discipline. This program may be generalized to the overall student populace; however, this program can also be geared towards professional writing and the problems faced within the “working world.” This service, according to Ms. Carlito, “helps you think critically and teaches you vital skills that everyone needs in life.” It is not only a tool for academia; it also applies beyond that to the challenges of careers, careers like professional writing. Professional writers need to know how to look for certain information, and have the ability to apply and use it in an analytical fashion. These skills can be honed in and amplified by this program, and can teach students valuable lessons in real world research and citation situations. Research is a part of daily life for many writers, and knowing how and where to get that information is crucial to being successful in the job market. As Ms. Carlito said, “These types of applications are for anything; information literacy is a must in today’s world.” This rings especially true for professional writing.

The PWC at UAB

Having the ability to communicate well is a desired trait that all employers are looking for. An integral part of that is written communication. The Professional Writing Club at UAB (PWC) has been established to help students understand and excel in written discourse. The PWC was founded last year by a group of Professional Writing Majors whose goal of was to create an open forum where the field and study of Professional Writing could be shared and explored across all fields of study at UAB.

The PWC has since achieved official recognition by the University. With this recognition and under the guidance of UAB faculty advisor Dr. Jeffrey Bacha, the PWC now has the credibility and knowledge to help facilitate its mission: “To equip students interested in Professional Writing with knowledge and experience to prepare them for the workforce. To network with professionals in the field, and participate in industry-focused workshops. To come together with others and innovate the future of the Professional Writing and Public Discourse program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).”

Following with this mission, the PWC has hosted several workshops on different elements of professional writing. These workshops have been on such topics as: résumé building, creating a Cover Letter and the basics of Photoshop. These workshops stressed the importance of good written communication and how to attract the eye of potential employers. Dr. Bacha lent his expertise and led the workshops, but they were planned and executed by the elected student officers of the club. The Photoshop workshop provided insight into one of the most widely used image editing software around and showed how design is an important part of professional writing. Having a good knowledge of these documents and the concepts associated with them is an important asset to have when job hunting. That is another key part of the PWC: giving students knowledge beyond what they might find in a classroom.

The PWC hopes to continue in this vain by hosting guest speaker events. The best way to learn about how professional writing crosses all sects of industry is to hear from those who use it in their professional lives. The PWC plans on having several guest speakers come and discuss with the club what professional writing means to them and how they apply the craft in their fields of industry. These speakers will show just how diversified professional writing can be, as well as, provide “real world” knowledge of the craft. Another way that the PWC will be providing real world knowledge is by executing professional level projects for UAB and the local community.