1. Olsen and Huckin, Technical Writing and Professional Communication, 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, 1991.

2. Williams, Style (fifth edition). For other guides to style in various academic disciplines, see these texts.

3. A good collegiate dictionary and a handbook. There are many helpful works on the Web: consider this version of a classic work by Strunk and White or a style guide developed by Penn State's Alistair Fraser (Earth and Mineral Sciences).

4. Decent skills in HTML.

English 497 offers you the opportunity to enhance your skills in planning, inventing, organizing, drafting, revising, and editing technical prose. Most students will develop these skills as they complete a single large project consisting of several parts--perhaps including a technical report and articles written for professional and popular journals. We will emphasize the importance of and strategies for accommodating your presentation to your audience. We will also devote much attention to editing technical prose, yours and your classmates'. Finally, we will recognize that the Web has altered the way that professionals communicate. You will learn to take advantage of the new electronic resources in discovering information and communicating it to others. All of the documents for this course will be shared electronically with everyone in the course.

In this course, you will learn strategies for planning, writing, organizing, evaluating, revising, and editing various kinds of documents. Two basic assumptions underlie this course:

• Writing is essential at all stages of a technical or scientific project.
• The technical writer's primary responsibility is fulfilling the needs of the reader.

Given these assumptions, you will use writing to develop, carry out, and report on your own scientific or technical project.

Because the class activities are designed to help you develop a broad range of writing skills, you need to participate fully in them. You should be prepared to:

1. Complete all papers on time. Papers will not be accepted out of sequence, any late paper will lose a full step in its grade (an "A" becomes a "B"), and any paper more than two days late will not be accepted.

2. Edit the work of others conscientiously and critically. If you are not in class for rough draft and editing sessions, you have defaulted on your responsibilities to your classmates. And a paper that has not been submitted for a required peer critique cannot be revised: I will grade the first draft I receive for its final grade.

3. Read carefully the assignments and be prepared to discuss them or write briefly about them. The homework assignments are important!

4. Attend each class and each scheduled conference (a minimum of three formal conferences).

Negligence in any of these areas means that you have failed to complete the requirements of the course satisfactorily, and your final grade will reflect that fact.

This course invites you to focus on one research topic for the entire semester. In four of the five assignments described below, you will address your presentation to different audiences, thereby encountering a variety of rhetorical situations. The value of writing on a single topic is two-fold: you will save research time and can therefore devote more time to rhetorical and editorial refinements; and you will see clearly a major assumption behind this course--that audience and purpose shape your selection of content, your focus, your organizational possibilities, and your style.

Conferences and Collaboration: please communicate with me when you have questions about an assignment, when you would like to try out some ideas before a paper is due, or when you have questions about a comment on a draft. You should also see me for help with particular writing problems, to resolve differences about grades, or to suggest ways to improve the course. You will also be expected to make extensive use of peers' judgments. My phone number and office hours are provided above; I strongly urge you to use email, for I check my email several times each day.

We will make extensive use of Web resources, so if you're not comfortable using a Web browser and basic HTML, you will need to get some quick training from CAC or elsewhere. For a helpful tutorial on Web publishing, just click here.

Attendance and preparation for class: I expect you to attend class everyday with your textbook and packet of supplementary materials in hand. An occasional absence is understandable but habitual absence is inexcusable. Therefore if you are absent more than three times, your class grade will be docked one full grade. It is particularly important for you to attend in-class workshops on drafts of your papers.

Assignments: In this course, I will try to hold you to standards that are similar to those in the professional academic or working world. All assignments will be published as Web documents on CAC's personal server. I will maintain the links to each of your pages so that you can easily read all papers completed for each assignment. Since I will maintain the links from our course page, we'll need to agree in advance on the "naming conventions" for your files. We'll work out the details in class.

Promptness: In either the professional academic or working world, you must meet deadlines. In this class, all projects are due at the beginning of class on the dates indicated on the syllabus. Assignments turned in late will be penalized one letter grade per day (A+ to B+) unless you have made other arrangements with me in advance.

Appearance: All final drafts of your work should be neatly prepared using standard margins and spacing. Whether it is a letter, a memorandum, or a report, your communication should exhibit complete and appropriate format. In general, letters and memos should be single-spaced and reports double-spaced. Rough drafts and take home assignments may be either handwritten (neatly) or typed. Always leave a blank line between paragraphs. Always number every page, and clearly label each draft with your name and the date.

Grammar, Spelling, Proofreading: At work, even a single error in spelling, grammar, or proofreading can jeopardize the effectiveness of some communications (depending on the rhetorical situation). My grading will reflect the great seriousness with which these matters are viewed in the working world. In general, papers with more than an average of two errors per page will be penalized. If you would like special assistance with any of these skills, I can recommend sources for extra help.

Back-up Copies: Do I need to say anything about backing up your files on whatever computer system you use? Please ask me for horror stories.

Revisions: You will receive feedback on your writing from me and/or from your classmates at various stages of the writing process (from planning through the draft you hand in for a grade). You should try to apply the comments, not only to improve the particular paper you are working on at the time, but also your strategies for writing in general. In some sense, no paper can ever be finished or perfected. However, if you think you can significantly improve a paper after it has been graded, you are welcome to do so. Note: cleaning up grammar and sentence style does not constitute significant improvement. If the grade for a revision is higher, it will replace the original grade.

Plagiarism (Cheating): Talking over your ideas and getting comments on your writing from friends are NOT examples of plagiarism. Taking someone else's words (published or not) and calling them your own IS plagiarism. Plagiarism has dire consequences, including flunking the paper in question, flunking the course, and university disciplinary action, depending on the circumstances of the office. The simplest way to avoid plagiarism is to document the sources of your information carefully. We will discuss methods of documentation in class; see me if you have any questions.

I will try to assess your papers within two periods after you submit them. I expect the revision within two periods after I provide feedback. All students will also provide constructive critiques of others' work.

Paper 1 Proposal to a Non-Technical Audience (3-5 pages)

Paper 2 (Research Proposal to a Complex Audience (7-10 pages)

Paper 3 (Editing and Evaluating a Peer's Research Proposal)

Paper 4 (Professional Article or Formal Report for a Professional Audience)

Paper 5 (Getting the Word out to Non-Specialists + Oral Report)

Final Examination (this will be an out-of-class project)

Wordiness

Simplifying your prose