ENG 3318 Professional and Workplace Writing: Ethnography of a Workplace

A variety of tools will help you examine workplace writing - tone, intensity, word choice, etc. Some are old fashioned books, others computer tools. Check them all out and see which ones help you most for your individual project.

Intensity of feeling is reflected in word choice, so some of the links below might help you think about the word choices made in your sample writings. They come from both psychology and creative writing sources. You might turn up others by Googling "intensity of feelings chart."

Emotions and Feelings Charts

Aspiring Advice - Feelings the Right Intensity for Your Character's Emotions

This is a great database for finding information on careers and on what is important about writing skills in a given career or work situation.

Search for "writing and practice and (your profession).  For example: "writing AND practice AND engineers"

You can also try "skills and (your profession). For example:"Skills AND Programmers" to find out what skills are currently being sought by employers and how the average worker measures up in those skill areas. Writing and communication will be included in most of the articles.

If there is a specific type of writing you discover, such as a request for propsal, you can search for "writing" "request for proposal" as well.

You can use the links and resources on the next tab (Conduct Secondary Research) to discover more about specific professions and the writing requirements expected in each.