About the Course
ENG 613 - Technical and Scientific Writing
Spring 2008, January 24 - May 1
R 7:20 - 10:00pm, IN 328
Instructor
Office
Office Hours
Phone
According to the catalog, this course involves the intensive study of theory and practice of technical and scientific writing, with emphasis on writing for a variety of audiences, with a focus on writing and evaluating formal reports, articles for lay as well as technical audiences, proposals, theses, manuals, and other forms of technical prose. While we will indeed do most of those things (the exception being that we won’t all be working with the same genres), this description doesn’t really explain what the course is about in any detailed way. This lack of specificity is both a hallmark of the course description genre and a violation of one of the key practices of technical documentation: clear and concise rendering of specific, concrete details.
In this course, we’ll be focusing on three main questions:
- What are the available methods for investigating questions about writing in technical and scientific genres?
- What theories about writing do we have that can help us understand how to best analyze and produce technical and scientific documentation?
- What practices do technical and scientific writers engage in when writing for a variety of different audiences?
We’ll also be asking these questions of texts that function within specific contexts; examining the interactions of text, context, and audience forms the organizational structure for the course. These are the five contexts we’ll be focusing on:
- Academic/Disciplinary
- Organizational/Institutional
- Regulatory
- Policy Development/Political
- Public
Our three questions (on methods, theories, and practices) will be re-asked for each context and throughout the course we will consider how our answers change when faced with different spheres of influence and sources of exigency.