Hello and welcome:
If I could have just a few minutes of your time, i’d like to share a fairly eye opening story with you? You may learn a thing or two.
For all intents and purposes…I had no idea this was the proper way of expressing, “for all intensive purposes”. I felt like a fool the first day of class in the Fall of 2015. That foolish feeling was only the first of many.
Before that first day of class I had been anticipating another miserable English course, and for what? “Oh, yeah its one of those classes that will help you later in life.” That could be very true but, at the time all I was thinking of, were my opportunity costs to taking an English course. (Opportunity cost, for those who don’t know is economic talk for an individuals next best option, in regards to what they are currently doing.)
Sorry, where are my manors? My name is David Peirce. I’m a junior studying economics and mathematics here at Longwood University. And, yes I intentionally “forgot” to introduce who I am to begin this blog. Why? You may ask. Well, its because who I am ins’t more important then, what information I am sharing with you. That’s another thing I guess i’ll share with you all. Studying economics has taught me the most integral aspect to a well functioning society is efficiency. Without efficiency we might as well digress to the stone age, metaphorically. Entwined with my studies of technical writing, I am confident in the pressing, twenty first century issues I have chosen to defend that who I am is irrelevant in comparable magnitude.
Back to the course. Technical writing taught me more than I ever could have imagined. I understand now the importance of clarity in writing. Looking back on my time during the course, I am confident in my abilities to now express my knowledge of efficient analytical techniques, document types and their purposes, and especially how successful collaboration can create a well-founded cohesive document. In addition, my overall take away would be knowing and specifying towards a particular audience is key for users’ support. Since, technical writing’s goal is to persuade users into either do something, or think in some way, user support will determine your documents overall success.
The rest of the portfolio contains different types of documents (proposals, instructional manuals, usability tests/memorandums, and white papers) I wrote that were taught during the course. I encourage you to take a look. The underlying topic for all of my documents is economics, primarily theory. This is where I presume you could learn a thing or two. The documents I present here are not publishable outside of this blog but, they are in preparation to be at a later date.
Enjoy!
Sincerely, David Peirce