Reflection: Professional Writing

This month I practiced a few professional writing types. Reflecting on my progress, I look toward the future. How will I use what I practiced in the future? For the immediate future, I will be continuing my education at Full Sail University. At Full Sail any time I need to send a message I can use the professional E-mail template. Anytime I have a message board or blog post I will write it in block format with bold headers. Any time I need to write a document I will use single line spacing with double spacing between a paragraph to make them more presentable. As for the far future I have skill in letter writing, informal and formal propositions, e-mails and letters. I will be sure to reflect on my time practicing professional writing whenever I have important or career-focused goals I am trying to communicate.

My writing has been reviewed by both peers and instructors. Each had left feedback that I had considered to strengthen my writing technique. The most valuable of such feedback was to clarify my writing, though I had always written in my own style I found myself lax when reviewing and proofreading my own work. I knew what I was trying to say so what I had written made complete sense to me. Giving me the feedback to clarify myself made me reflect on my writing style and reconsider its complexity. Of course, I have read and heard about this issue before, but it did not click with me till after this feedback.

Organization is a big part of why we practice professional writing and I feel like this is one of my strengths. The use of data and research goes only so far without displaying them properly. This month I took this strength and improved on it as I learned to utilize standard professional writing formats. Visual representation of ideas through the block format and bold heading on sections lend well when I considered how to present information that I want to stand out and be easily accessed. Do I use a table? a graph? Or hide it in a block of text? I feel that the writing dictates the style for which to present information.

Proofreading is the main stay of any writing when trying to convey ideas, unfortunately, this has been my weakness. I would constantly take for granted spell check, word count and grammar check when producing written works. I would not question such technology when they made suggestions, nor would I bother to rethink the order of my sentences after I had written to them. I have grown to proofread better; I will now return to previous written statements and question the order for which I presented and the syntax of the statements. Was it necessary to write what I did? Is there a better way to write it? Is there a shorter way to say the same thing? For now, and into the future I will reflect on this month’s practices and consider those prior questions.