Differences and Similarities between “Professional” “Technical” and “Public” Writing
Professional Writing
Professional writing covers much of the writing you’ll be doing in your profession because correspondence such as emails, memos, newsletters, business letters, and cover letters, as well as other documents such as résumés, social media posts, blogs, vlogs as well as a variety of reports such feasibility studies or recommendation reports. Professional writing is the writing you will do day-to-day in your professional life. While professional writing may convey technical information, the information is usually briefer and targets an individual or small group of readers who may or may not be experts in the field.
Professional writing is concerned with the operational purposes or needs of an organization. Professional writing gets business done.
To draw a distinction between technical and professional writing, in “Writing in the Milieu of Utility,” Teresa Kynell observes: “Business writing emerged in response to the specific needs of those involved in business-related enterprises and from the daily need for clear communication both inside and outside corporations. Business writing is grounded in commercial enterprise and in the communication needs of organizations. The emphasis in professional writing is on goods, merchandise, customers and the larger systems of business work inside and outside of organizations.”
Effective writing is essential in business, industry, healthcare, government and civic organizations because virtually every action must be communicated to supervisors, subordinates or both as well as internal and external clients. Clear and effective professional writing furthers the goals of the organization.
Professional writing has a readership inside and outside the organization. The development of formal communication networks significantly increased the efficiency of this communication, which, in turn, increased the organization’s overall efficiency.
Much of the work done in professional settings is accomplished through internal forms of communication. Professional writing is a tactical instrument that always considers the strategic plans and goals of the organization. Professional writing, professional communication in the 21st century is:
- Purposeful
- Produced collaboratively
- Designed with the incorporation of visuals and sound
- Goal oriented (in terms of both hard goals like project deadlines and soft goals like rapport building
- Aimed at audiences of stakeholders with agency and/or credentials
- Shaped by the discursive conventions of a professional community
- Focused on a global marketplace
Technical Writing
Where professional writing focuses on the broader ‘professional’ need of an organization, technical writing is writing about any technical (think highly specialized and complex) topic. The term “technical” refers to specialized knowledge that is held by experts and specialists. Whatever your major is, you are developing an expertise and becoming a specialist in a particular technical area. And whenever you try to write or say anything about your field, you are engaged in technical communication. Technical content includes expert or specialized knowledge or information, often of a mechanical or scientific nature, but it also includes other types of specialized knowledge as well. Technical communication, then, can be defined as writing/communication that melds the verbal, the visual, and the technical into a comprehensible text for a particular purpose and audience in a specific context.
Engineers and other technical professionals are accustomed to creating highly specialized designs and solutions. Technical documents also provide an important record for future reference. However, the value of that technical work can only be materialized if the benefit of the technical solution can be understood by others—some of whom may be experts, some of whom may not.
Technical communication is essential because your specialized knowledge must be communicated to supervisors, subordinates, or both, as well as clients, executives, and in many cases, the public-at-large.
Communication, both oral and written, is so important that the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), an ac-crediting body for secondary education programs in engineering, incorporated a communication proficiency component in their accreditation standards.
Technical writing, or technical communication in the 21st century is:
- Produced for a specific purpose and audience
- Designed with the incorporation of visuals or sound
- Considered chiefly expository
- Shaped through collaboration
- Created to be functional
- Characterized by a special vocabulary and technical content, and
- Focused on the global marketplace.
One question that always comes up in discussions of PTC is how technical writing differs from professional writing. This question does not have a simple answer. In short, the difference between the two is that technical writing is writing about a technical subject, while professional writing is the everyday writing that gets business done.
Public Writing
Public writing is just that public. This category of writing can include public opinion pieces written by a layperson, letters to the editor, newspaper or magazine articles etc. Often, professional documents or technical documents generate conversation with the public.
This requires a writer to breakdown very complex, jargon filled ideas from technical and professional spaces into an easily understood context that can aid and enrich public discourse. Public writing is a means by which to disseminate to a wider audience the research done by academics, business and industry, government agencies, scientists, technical experts.
No matter your major or what you plan to do when you graduate, you will need to write and communicate. You simply cannot escape it. Thus, our goal in this course is give you knowledge and skills so that writing and communicating can become easier since you’ll have a way to approach any writing or communication situation.
