Chapter 9

This chapter focuses on resumes and other important documents for employment. This chapter walks through what a resume should look like and the important parts that need to be included. The very first part is the contact information and the career objective at the top of the resume. Other things that need to be included is education, work experience, personal interests and references. Another important document is an application letter. This is a letter that you submit to a prospective employer along with your resume. Something that I did not know the name of before reading this was a dossier. This contains college transcripts, recommendation letters and other important documents. A portfolio contains examples of your work along with a statement at the beginning explaining everything that is included.

Chapter 21

This chapter focused oral presentations. There are five types of oral presentations, each one contains slightly different information and is prepared for differently. An informal presentation is a brief talk that only gives the critical and important information. A training presentation is exactly what it sounds like, it is used to teach a skill or job safety for example. A persuasive presentation is used to change the audience's opinion to agree with the presenter. An action plan presentation presents a problem to the audience and then provides a solution and encourages them to action to make the solution happen. The final type of presentation is a sales presentation. This is used to sell a product or idea to the audience, it is very important to make sure that this type of presentation is well researched and factual. It is important to create a storyboard or outline no matter which type of presentation you are preparing and then to decide the best way to deliver the information. Another important part of preparing a presentation is to choose the technology and to practice the presentation so delivering it goes as close to plan as possible.

Chapter 17

Chapter 17 was focused on proposals. The most important thing about proposals is that they are clear and to the point. There should not be any vague language and be very specific. It is also very important that the proposal is in the right format. There are three forms of proposals, sales, planning, and research. Each type contains slightly different information. A formal proposal has a clear title, background information, statement of the problem, description of the solution, the cost, timing and your qualifications for the solution, and a conclusion that makes the audience want to take action. The conclusion should summarize the solution by covering the most important points and really making the audience want to take action to put the solution into action.

Chapter 14

Summaries are something we have been writing for school for quite some time, however, this chapter goes more in depth than anything I've ever been taught. They talk a lot about making the summary short and to the point. There should not be extra information that the reader does not need to know right away. Also, the summary should not be written in a technical manner. It should be written so that it is easy to understand instead of trying to be technical and confusing the reader. After writing the summary you should go back and double check your summary against the original copy to be sure you covered all of the main points. It is important the reader of your summary is able to find each of the main points of the reading in your summary.

Chapter 10

This chapter focused on different types of letters and memos. Making sure you have the correct tone throughout the memo is very important. It is important not to criticize or judge the reader. The best way to get the correct tone across is to put yourself in the recipients shoes and read the memo as if someone else had just sent it to you. They also talk about the simple format of a memo. They have an introduction, body and conclusion. Memos are meant to give information in a quick and easy manner. I had never considered the different types of letters that you could write. Although it makes sense, I had not thought about putting these letters into categories. Even though all of the letters are different they have similar strategies. All of them talk about getting to the point and not putting off writing the letter until the last minute.

Chapter 7

The focus of this chapter was on visuals. The main point was to make sure your visuals are helpful to your audience. The visuals are made for the audience so they should be visuals that they can understand and make sense of. Some of the most common visuals are graphs, tables and charts. These are all things that we have had to make at some point during school, however, they need to be made with some different considerations. They must be very clearly labeled and the audience should be able to look at them and very quickly get the information from them and understand that information. Another thing to consider when using the visuals is to not put too much information in each one. If there is too much information the audience can get confused and be overstimulated.

Chapter 5

This chapter talks about placing information in a way that makes the most sense for your reader. I thought it was interesting they talked about outlining. This is something that we have been told to do since probably junior high. I always thought that this was a waste of time and nothing that I would need to do after high school. Obviously it is a useful skill that helps the writer break up the information and realize the best way to break up the information so the reader understands it all. Something else that I think is very effective and that we see in almost every text book and important text, is clarifying headings. These work very well with breaking up information and allows the reader to better find the information that they need to read or look over.

Chapter 4

This chapter talked about delivering information in a usable fashion. Of course the first thing that they talk about is audience. They talk about how important it is to know your audience in order to deliver information that they can use. The next part that they talked about was figuring out the document's purpose. I found this an interesting tip because I had never thought about writing something without first knowing the purpose of the document. Obviously figuring out the purpose of the document is very important before you can begin writing. There are other important factors to consider that I would never have thought of. For example, the budget is something that as a college student I have not really had to think about when writing. They also make a good point in anticipating possible problems with the document and how things may get misinterpreted. I know that it is easy to read your own writing and think that it makes perfect sense, but it is important to reread the document after stepping away from it. By taking a short break from the document before rereading it, you get to read it with a fresh mind and are more likely to read it from an outsider perspective.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13 talked about instructions and procedures. The first thing they talk about is finding out what your audience already knows about the task. This is important so you know how specific you need to be with each step of instructions or if you can be more vague and they will still understand. They also talk about the many different forms that instructions can come in. There is the more simple instructional brochure, the more in depth user manual, quick reference material, hyperlinked and computer instructions. Each form has a little bit different format and include a little bit different information. A brochure is a more simple form, however, a user manual contains much more detail and important information. They then talk about the different parts of instructions. There is the title, an overview, the body, conclusion, visuals, and warnings or danger notices. Procedures let people know how they should complete a task. They can be used so people know how to safely complete a task, or are commonly used in the medical field. At the end of the chapter they talk about why usability testing is important. Without instructions that may not be clear could be distributed and could cost companies a lot of money in mistakes with their products.

People, People, People

The main focus of this article was to think about your audience in every way possible. The article suggests that you make lists of the most common groups that will see your work. After finding your major audience, you should list qualities of your audiences. Another important part of looking at your audience and gathering their questions on your topic. After all of this you can use the information you have gathered you can use this to create personas to help to better understand the audience that you are talking to. Looking this in depth at your audience allows you to know them and to better understand the best way to present the information to them.

Color Theory

I've always found it very interesting the different meanings or feelings that a color can evoke. When we were younger we picked colors based on what we liked or what we thought looked the best, but now when picking colors we have to look at the connotations  that come along with those colors. One of the most common known meanings of a color is blue. Blue evokes a feeling of trust and allows a person to relax. It is used a lot for banks and travel agencies. Another color that was mentioned was black. It represents mourning, elegance and maturity.

Chapter 2 Reflection

I think that everyone in college should have to read this chapter. In almost every class we have group projects and this chapter really talks about to successfully work in a group. I thought it was interesting all the different technologies that can help a group communicate. The suggestion of digital whiteboards was really interesting to me. I think that this technology could be really helpful and a fun way to collaborate ideas. I also liked how they talked about editing each other's work. I think that this can sometimes be very hard for group members to do in fear of offending someone. By giving tips of how to edit each other's work it will help the group to work together and end up with a better finished product.

Chapter 1 Reflection

I found chapter one to be very interesting. I had not thought of technical writing to include so many different forms. It had never occurred to me that emails or letters could be considered technical writing. I also had thought that the process for writing technical pieces that the process would be different than other writing but it really is not. You still have to consider the audience and proof read like you do with any other writing. I found it very interesting how familiar technical writing is since I thought it was going to be very different.