Spring 2011
English 384J, A02
Writing in the Professions
Instructor
John H. Whicker
jw338609@ohio.edu
Office: 343 Ellis Hall
Office Phone: 740-593-2799
Office Hours: 12–2 PM, M & W
Required Texts
The Non-Designers Design Book
Robin Williams, 3rd Edition
The Little Seagull Handbook
Richard Bullock and Francine
Weinberg
Additional readings avail-
able on Blackboard
1
Introduction
W elcome to English 384J Writing in the Professions. I’m
excited to work with all of you as we try to learn a thing
or two about both about writing in general and profession-
al writing specifically. Our goal this quarter is to try and
deepen our knowledge about both of these topics and how
they relate to and create each other. To do this, we will be
reading a lot of texts about writing. These texts should give
us a good foundation to use as we go about the business
of researching and writing about the ways writing works in
your intended professions. Our course project will be to un-
derstand how writing functions to create and structure rela-
tionships and create knowledge within the particular social
environments of your intended professions, which means
that you will be researching those professions with the intent
of analyzing and theorizing how writing serves, maintains,
and even creates those professions and the knowledge they
generate and use. You’ll document your findings through
the various documents I’ll ask you to produce.
Course Work
I’ll require you to produce four significant documents: a
Professional Profile package (Resume & Cover-letter respond-
ing to an actual call for applications, LinkedIn Account
Profile), a Genre Analysis, Proposal and Annotated Bibliography,
and a Manual for writing in your profession. Each of these
projects will involve multiple components that may include
workshops, consultations with me individually, small group
workshops, peer reviews, reflective essays, posts to your per-
sonal blogs or the class blog, individual or collaborative work
on our class Wiki, etc. Your final project for the course will
be assembling these documents into an E-portfolio with a
cover-letter informing me of any revisions you make and giv-
ing a self-assessment of your projects individually and your
performance in the course overall, and a reflective essay on
your experience in the course. In addition to these formal
assignments, I will ask you to produce numerous informal
writings including: responses to readings that you will post
to your personal blog before each class, work on the class

English 384J, A02
Writing in the Professions
Wiki, in-class writing, group work, etc. Finally, because our
success in this course depends on us all engaging fully, at-
tendance and participation are mandatory.
Grading
I hate giving grades. Nothing inhibits your work to de-
velop as writers and thinkers like grades. Since I don’t want
you giving up on your work just because you are satisfied
with the grade you’ve got already (or depressed about the
possibility of ever doing any better), I won’t assign any
grades until the end of the quarter. You probably won’t like
this; it will probably cause you some level of anxiety and
discomfort. I’m sorry about that. I’d prefer to simply believe
that you will work as hard as you can even if you’ve already
got a satisfactory grade, but experience has taught me that
sometimes, for very good reasons, you might choose not to
put your best effort in if you think less than your best effort
is enough. If you aren’t sure where you stand, I find you
will work harder to be sure you get the grade you want. Ide-
ally, we could both just concentrate on learning and creat-
ing knowledge rather than the messy and divisive issue of
grades; unfortunately, I have to grade you.
On the plus side, I think the most important part of a
class like this is showing up, reading all the texts, and doing
all the work, so I assign grades accordingly: a majority of
your grade will consist of attendance, participation, and the
completion of all assignments. Simply put, there are a great
number of easy points that you can earn just by showing
up and doing all the work. The more of these easy points
you get, the fewer more difficult points you need to get the
grade you want.
Grading Criteria
Grading Scale:
% Attendance: 10%
A 94–100 Participation: 10%
A- 90–93
B+ 86–89 Informal Writing: 15%
B 84–85 Professional Profile Package: 10%
B- 80–83
Genre Analysis: 15%
C+ 76–79
C 74–75
C- 70–73 Proposal and Annotated Bibliography: 10%
D+ 66–69 Writing Manual: 20%
D 64–65
D- 60–63 Final Portfolio: 10%
F 0–59
2
Spring 2011
Attendance and Participation
Attendance
Your attendance to every class is mandatory. I will keep
a tally of attendance points that I will give out every day. If
you are absent for any reason, you will not get the points for
that day. After about three absences, that loss of points will
start negatively impacting your grade. After six absences, I
think you have missed too much of the class to pass, so you
will receive an F for the course.
Participation
Your participation grade will be determined by adding
your attendance grade to your informal writing grade, divid-
ing by two, and adjusting the result up subjectively based on
how much I remember you participating over the course of
the quarter. If you didn’t participate much, you will get the
average of your attendance and informal writing grades. I
won’t dock you points.
Informal writing
We will do numerous types of writing that I call informal
because they won’t count as formal projects in my grading
calculations. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important. In
fact, I often think that these are more important than the
other papers because they tend to give a more honest and
accurate look at your thinking because I won’t expect them
to be polished, finished works. Most of these will be short
(two page) responses to the course readings I will ask you to
post to your personal blogs (I will also require that you post
thoughtful comments to at least two of your peers’ posts
each time to get full points). Others will include in-class
writing, group work, and additional work on our course
wiki not included in the grades for major projects. All out
of class informal writing will be submitted on your indi-
vidual blogs, and all papers will be submitted electronically
through blackboard.
Course Policies
»» I use e-mail to communicate important information
about the class. Email me by the end of the first day to
establish communication and so I can invite you to be an
editor of the class blog and the class wiki.
»» Your work in this class is always public. Don’t submit
writing you can’t let other students see.
»» All out-of-class work must be typed.
»» Papers must be ready on the assigned dates to get credit.

English 384J, A02
Writing in the Professions
1. See the full English Department
Plagiarism policy attached to this
syllabus.
3
»» I am not your editor or proofreader. You are responsible
to ensure that all work you turn in meets the conven-
tions of mechanics, grammar, and usage expected of aca-
demic or professional writing. Any paper with excessive
problems will be returned and must be resubmitted after
problems have been resolved.
»» If an assignment is lost or missing, you must provide an-
other copy—no matter whose fault it is.
»» I will not accept late assignments. If you know you will
be absent, we can make arrangements for you to turn in
assignments early.
»» All papers must incorporate sources ethically using cita-
tion consistent with an established citation style, includ-
ing a final page of references, works cited, or bibliogra-
phy.
»» Plagiarism: Cheating—whether by claiming another’s
ideas or work as your own (fraud) or making up or falsify-
ing information (fabrication)—will result in, at the least,
zero credit for the assignment, and possibly a course
grade of F and a report to the College. You are at all times
responsible for handling sources ethically by acknowledg-
ing the author and source of directly borrowed ideas and
language in your writing.1
»» All Major Papers must be turned in electronically on
Blackboard. THey will be analyzed by Safe Assign, a pro-
gram designed to identify plagiarism.
»» ADA: Please let me know as soon as possible if you need
any special accommodations in order to work success-
fully in this class. Bring any materials you have received
from the Office of Institutional Equity to document your
particular needs.
»» Everyone in our class, including me, must remain civil
and courteous at all times. We will often have opportuni-
ty to share our opinions and beliefs, but no racist, sexist,
heterosexist, or any other negative communication harm-
ful to an individual or group will be tolerated. Whether
something is offensive or not will be determined by the
people whom it might offend.
»» Your continued enrollment in this course constitutes
your acceptance and understanding of the policies out-
lined in this syllabus and all attached OU or English De-
partment policies and your committment to adhere to all
policies and employ your best efforts to accomplishing
course objectives and outcomes.
Spring 2011
Comments
»» Yes!: I like what you’re doing and want you to do more
of it.
»» Great Language!: Your sentence or paragraph impresses
me, and I want you to use more of this excellent style.
»» Nice! I find the way you made a point rhetorically effec-
tive and want to see you use similar appeals again.
»» Yellow Highlight: I wasn’t able to understand your point
or meaning—your fault or mine, it’s a problem.
»» Blue Highlighted Word: “I don’t think it means what you
think it means”
»» Where am I?: I lost the train of thought—I’m not sure
how what you write about at that point relates to what
came before.
»» ¶ (Paragraph symbol): Begin new paragraph here. Para-
graphs are marked by indenting the first line not skip-
ping a line.
»» Way to go!: I’m pleased with your work overall and think
you’re on the right track. (This is not an indication of a
grade but an indication that continued effort in the cur-
rent direction will greatly improve your chances of getting
a good grade.)
Plagiarism policy
A cademic Dishonesty: Plagiarism is defined by the
Ohio University Student handbook as a Code A of-
fense (10); this means:
[a] student found to have violated any of the following
regulations will be subject to a maximum sanction of
expulsion, or any sanction not lessthan a reprimand . .
. . Plagiarism involves the presentation of some other
person’s work as if it were the work of the presenter.
A faculty member has the authority to grant a failing
grade. . . as well as referring the case to the director of
judiciaries.
Any student who has chosen to plagiarize will receive an
F for the course and will be referred to judiciaries in most
cases. Please, if you are not sure how to avoid plagiarizing,
see your instructor or a trained writing center tutor. Also,
note that the Safe Assign program on Blackboard will iden-
tify plagiarized material, even copies of essays written for
other classes.
 Spring 2011
English 384J, A02

Writing in the Professions

Learning outcomes for all English J Research:
»» search a variety of academic databases using appropriate
courses - Spring 2011 and effective strategies
Write: »» evaluate the quality and validity of sources using clear
criteria
»» write for specific purposes, audiences and situations »» understand what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid
»» show ability to quote, paraphrase, summarize, analyze, it
synthesize, and critique »» document sources correctly using an assigned documen-
»» compose original arguments using rhetorical strategies tation style
»» show ability to utilize and/or analyze visual texts along »» demonstrate ability to develop a good question for re-
with alphabetic texts search
»» practice writing in a variety of genres
»» approach writing as a recursive process
»» use various activities to generate ideas for writing
»» use informal writing as a tool for developing critical
thinking
»» revise at both global and local levels
»» use correct documentation, grammar, spelling, and punc-
tuation
»» compose a minimum of 20 pages of formal, graded writ-
ing, not including revised writing

Read:
»» read a variety of texts and genres
»» differentiate between primary and secondary sources
»» analyze and/or evaluate texts according to the audience,
purposes, and writing situations
»» understand and use a variety of concepts or theories to
analyze different texts
»» understand and use rhetorical concepts to analyze texts
»» read own texts reflectively to identify strengths, weak-
nesses, and areas needing improvement
»» respond to peers’ texts constructively at both global and
local levels.