First class blog-(professional writers: what they do and where they work)

I don't know-When I tell my extended family that I am working towards a "Professional Writing and Editing" concentration, they ask me what I'm talking about. I specifically remember trying to explain it to my uncle over Thanksgiving dinner last year. The question was "What exactly does a professional writer do?". I am easily embarressed, thinking that this was not 'cool enough' for a major-or at the very worst, he was worried I would graduate and not be able to find a job because I did not have a 'practical' major.

I think Dr. Gouge helped me a lot with understanding that there are professional writers everywhere-all you have to do is look. When I think of one, the first thing I think of is a big corporation with lots of overpaid people who can't write simple things like emails and memos. I realize this is more like a glorified secretary position, but someone somewhere does have to make these people sound good to other companies, employees, and possible clients.

This kind of job would not only be at big corporations-small engineering groups have to be able to communicate through reports and procedures-if one word wrong in a list of one thousand instructions, someone could be seriously injured.

Professional writers could write proposals, memos, step-by-step instructions, letters of intent, and many other things. A professional writer could be an editor as well, taking content that someone else has produced and polishing it, making it look/sound better.

There is no limit to where you could find a professional writer-at NASA, looking over technical documents to send someone to the moon; teaching in a classroom, helping colleagues produce a newsletter for the English department, or at Dell, writing content for websites that millions of people see daily.

I think my favorite part about being a PWE student was learning that even if there wasn't a position at a company specifically for a professional writer, that didn't mean there never COULD be. There were many instances last year during classes when the topic came up that you could sell yourself to a business-because professional writers are useful to any company in the modern world.