Shitty Rough Draft

Adapt to your readers now or lose them forever
            In today’s society, writing is everywhere without us even thinking about it. We are writing papers and essays in our classes, we are writing grocery lists and we are sending constant text messages to friends and family. Communication is key: both in business and in relationships and being a good communicator means that you need to be proficient in both oral and written communication. Not only do we use writing because we want to write (text messages, grocery lists, blogs etcetera), we use writing in almost all businesses and professions today. Even the most physical jobs where you spend your days carrying heavy equipment, you still need to work with manuals, communicate with coworkers and maybe keep a log of your hours. After discussing writing with Chad Clark, the area manager at Beach City Apartments we came to the conclusion that writing is everywhere, regardless if you like it or not and being a good writer is essential in order to develop other skills. But what does it mean to be a good writer? As a good writer, the most important skill is your ability to adapt your writing to the audience and the situation that you are facing.

Audience
Adapting to your audience is essential talking about good and efficient writing. Writing an essay about the issues around modern medicine using the same language, as you would in a children’s book will not make you look like a serious writer. On the other hand, using formal language with judicial words and phrases will not work if you are giving out instructions to kids either. When Chad Clark, area manager at Beach City is writing different kinds of documents for his employees, he knows what phrases to use and what phrases not to use. When writing an email to his lawyer about the lease he will use words that his resident assistants probably will not understand or know the entire meaning behind. All different departments at Beach City have a different team (the accounting team, the leasing team, the security team etcetera) and within those departments they all have their own jargon – different words and phrases that goes along with their responsibilities. Chad also states that in order to make sure that his writing makes sense he usually have people from different departments reading it if it is important, even if they do not understand every single word they need to get the major points of each document. That is a part of his writing process when he writes anything that is more long-term than an email or just a report. When writing the lease for the new leasing season the process starts with Brent (Chad’s manager) who is the director of property operations. Brent will write the lease up discussing it with their lawyer. Then it will go through Chad who will edit the lease and make sure that it makes sense (again, working with their lawyer since it is a formal legal document) and when Chad is done he will pass it on to his leasing manager to proofread it one more time before it is actually considered done and will be used in their leasing process. As we read in chapter seven of “They Say, I Say”, adapting to your audience is mainly about pinpointing who your target is (reader) and why this piece of writing matters to that person. They talk about how you should ask the question “Who Cares” multiple times when writing something, in order to make sure that you know who your audience, why they should care and how you should write your piece so that it will make sense to that specific audience. Having an audience reading your piece without knowing why they should care about it or why they should read it will not bring a good outcome. By showing why and how your piece of writing is relevant to the reader will make that person to read it more clearly and with more interest and in order to do so, you need to know who your audience is and how you should adapt your writing so it is as clear as possible to that audience. 

Situation
Chad Clark stated that the major part of his day is spent writing emails and only a small portion of the day will go to write other documents: such as the judicial process or manuals for the resident assistants. There are also other types of writing associated with his job, but they are mostly seasonal. The lease and application forms, roommate forms and flyers for advertising are all seasonal documents that will be written or edited at the beginning of each leasing season. Discussing writing and how writing is different based on what situation you are in or what context you are facing is essential and that was mentioned multiple times during the interview. When writing an email to employees, tenants or parents the style of writing is more casual and the language used is easier to understand and more casual as well. When writing a document explaining the judicial process on the other hand, the language and style is formal, decisive and forthright. It is all about adapting your writing to match the context and situation that you are in. Writing a lease or a judicial process using casual language and slang would not make a good impression and it would not fill its purpose (inform about something important).
            In the first chapter of “Understanding Rhetoric”, we can read about how each time your write it will have a different demand, have different expectations and it will need its on ways to make sense of how it should be written. They also state the importance of framing your writing so it make sense with the context using different styles and language. As Chad Clark mentioned during his interview, there is no way to make yourself look presentable if you have a lease with a lot of misspellings and if you are not grammatically correct. Reading through the first chapter of “Everything is an Argument” we can also make a clear connection between good writing and adapting to your context. There is a paragraph about considering context and how you cannot write a text in an efficient way if you do not have any information about its context, environment and situation. What is important to keep in mind though is that not only is there a context and situation for your words as the writer, the reader will also interpret your writing differently based on his/hers context and situation.