I enrolled in a writing course

I enrolled in a summer session writing course at UNLV, Fundamentals of Business Writing: "Examines the rhetorical principles and composing practices necessary for writing effective business letters, memos, and reports."  It covers not just core writing skills but also business writing conventions, formatting, planning and managing research and writing projects, writing collaboratively, etc.  I'm pretty excited about it so far.

It's the prerequisite course for UNLV's Professional Writing Certificate, which also sounds interesting.  Here are the certificate's courses and descriptions:

Document Design: "Explores fundamental theories and practices of designing professional documents. Considers how design is influenced by genre and rhetorical context. Students will use appropriate tools to design printed documents."

Advanced Professional Communication: "Analyzes a range of professional writing topics, applying rhetorical theories and techniques to specific professional writing situations, especially within organizations."

Electronic Documents and Publications: "Explores advanced principles of information architecture and content development for web-based documents and publications. Students will plan, design, develop, edit and publish in a variety of web-based genres."

The certificate also requires three elective English courses. These look the most interesting to me:

Advanced Composition: "Explores writing and literacy. Students will develop greater awareness of themselves as strategic writers by studying and creating texts for different audiences, purposes and contexts in a variety of styles and genres."

Research and Editing: "Library research, as distinct from experimental or laboratory research, and report writing and editing for students in all disciplines."

Writing for Publication: "Intensive study of the business of writing, designed to serve the needs of the freelance writer. Includes discussion of literary markets and popular literary genres."

Visual Rhetoric: "Study of the persuasive and aesthetic effects that visual elements have on readers/users in print and online documents. Visual elements include typography, graphics, images, color, paper or screen textures, alignment, and multimedia."

Principles of Modern Grammar: "Surveys the structure of contemporary English grammar. Examines the workings of the English language from a linguistic perspective, concentrating primarily on sentence structure."

The prerequisite chains and class schedule of the MS Accounting program are such that I don't think I'll be able to take a full 15 credit load of graduate accounting classes most semesters (the program seems designed with part-time, working students in mind), so it may be possible to simultaneously complete all or most of the Professional Writing Certificate program without tacking more semesters on.

I'm seriously considering enrolling in it because it looks like its emphasis is on the type of writing I am interested in: practical nonfiction that explains or instructs.  I have no interest in writing fiction or "creative nonfiction", which unfortunately seems to be the focus of most writing courses I've looked at.  No Great American Novel for me -- I just want tell people how to manage their personal finances or where to find a good beer in Las Vegas or how to make money on the internet or how to get a date or other useful information and advice gleaned from my own research and experiences.

Comments

[Nat]

how to make money on the internet

Oh come on, that's not fiction?

[Capella]

I never notice your grammar, and I'm usually a stickler, so while the grammar class might be interesting I don't think it is the most practical choice. (Although if you don't already own it, I would recommend buying a copy of Strunk & White - it's a little old-fashioned, but in my opinion it's still the authority.)

[maurile]

I have no interest in writing fiction or "creative nonfiction", which unfortunately seems to be the focus of most writing courses I've looked at.

You've punctuated that correctly in British English. But in American English, the comma precedes the closing quotation mark.

[Jacqueline]

My rigid little brain just can't cope with the concept of putting a comma inside the quotes if it's not part of the phrase being quoted! :(

I've read that ", ". etc. is starting to catch on here, so maybe I'll just keep doing it in the hopes that it becomes standard American English punctuation too. :)

[Philip Welch]

Putting the comma outside the quotation marks is another way in which I am quite militant about my preferred usage.

[Wayne]

I am sure anyone who deals with computer programming would hate seeing punctuation inside the quotes if it isn't part of the quote. Does ANYONE actually like keeping punctuation inside the quotes ? I fully expect the more sane usage to replace the older rule in American English.

[Nat]

Putting the comma outside the quotation marks is another way in which I am quite militant about my preferred usage.

Yeah, I like that way better, too. And single quote marks.

[Jacqueline]

To Maurile and anyone else who uses the standard American English punctuation: What do you think when someone uses the British English convention instead? Although the latter seems more logical to me, I can suck it up and do the former if I would otherwise come across as an idiot to most good writers.

[Philip Welch]

You're asking people who use a stupid, illogical usage convention whether you'd come across as an idiot to "good writers"? That sounds like a horribly misaddressed question!

[Nat]

Although the latter seems more logical to me, I can suck it up and do the former if I would otherwise come across as an idiot to most good writers.

If you're writing for publication in America, you should use the former, because you're going to piss off your editor doing otherwise; "Find and Replace" doesn't work well switching single quote marks to double, because it picks up the apostrophes, too.

If you're writing for yourself, it won't matter much; people well think more less of you if you're inconsistent.

[Nat]

well=will in that last paragraph.

[Timothy]

To Maurile and anyone else who uses the standard American English punctuation: What do you think when someone uses the British English convention instead?

It depends heavily on context and audience, really. The main point of grammar guides isn't so much that things are "right", but that they are formatted in a standard way that the audience is used to seeing.

I see the British version of a lot of punctuation and I think, "This person must have spent some time writing for a British publication," beyond that I don't have much of a reaction.

My only word of caution is BEWARE BUSINESS ENGLISH! Too long in there and you'll be synergizing outsited-the-box ideas so that you can do something impactful for the reality of this win-win situation.

[Timothy]

Outside-the-box...geeze.

[Jacqueline]

"My only word of caution is BEWARE BUSINESS ENGLISH! Too long in there and you'll be synergizing outsited-the-box ideas so that you can do something impactful for the reality of this win-win situation."

Actually, my Business Writing course is explicitly *against* that sort of writing. It's quite a good class so far, in terms of emphasis on clarity, conciseness, and to-the-point organization.

[Capella]

concision.