Academic and Business Writing

By Maggie Sokolik

What characterizes academic writing and business writing? What are the differences between the two genres? Where do they intersect? This book offers an overview of the features of both styles of writing, as well as opportunities to improve your writing skills in a wide variety of contexts.

 

This book was written to accompany the free online course of the same name, the second of two courses offered by the College Writing Programs of the University of California, Berkeley, through edX.org. For students in the course, this book offers additional ways to practice writing, editing, and reviewing the materials. However, the materials here are independent of the course, and function as an effective study of academic and business writing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayzgoose Press
• Release date: Mar 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781498971249

Maggie Sokolik

Maggie Sokolik, Ph.D. was born in Olympia, Washington. She is a writer/editor living in the Bay Area. She graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and received a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from UCLA. She directs the writing program at UC Berkeley. She is also the instructor for a popular online writing course, College Writing 2x, as well as the BerkeleyX Book Club, both offered through edx.org. These courses are offered free of charge to readers and writers around the world, and have attracted over a quarter million students to date.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This book accompanies the online course, College Writing 2.2x, Academic and Business Writing, the second of two courses offered by College Writing Programs of the University of California, Berkeley, through edX.org. This book offers additional ways to practice writing, editing, and reviewing the materials for the online course.

If you have purchased this book and are not taking the course, you will still find use for the materials, which are written to be usable independent of the course. However, because the course is offered free of charge, we recommend that you look for the schedule on the http://edx.org website and join the live course. This will give you the opportunity to learn along with other students from around the world.

1

WHAT IS GENRE?

Flurry of papers

Overview

What is genre? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it is:

gen·re

pronunciation: ['ZHän·rə]  noun

a particular type or category of literature or art

a literary/film/musical genre

Example:

"Books by Agatha Christie are part of the mystery genre."

However, the word genre has different meanings. For the purposes of this book, it will mean either of these two things:

A category of writing style: mystery, romance, professional, historical, scientific, etc.

A type of writing within any category: journal entry, letter, essay, novel, etc.

We will focus on two main genres: academic writing and business writing. Within each of these categories of writing, there are different genres or sub-genres.

If only one of these interests you, you may choose to focus your work on that genre. If you are interested in both, you can work on both types as well. 

Academic and Business Writing

The following table shows some of the types of writing you can find in academic writing and business writing. Of course, some types of writing appear on both lists. As you read these over, think about:

What types of writing are you familiar with?

Which don't you know anything about?

Which ones are not listed here? 

Table 1. Types of Writing

Academic Writing

essay

journal entry

 academic paper

 research report

 book review

 review of literature

 thesis or dissertation

 slide presentation

 abstract

Business Writing

email

memo

letter

proposal

report

instruction/procedures manuals

slide presentation

pitch

executive summary

Descriptions of Writing Types

Academic Writing

essay: a composition (usually short) on a specific idea or subject, usually in prose form. Essays take different forms, such as persuasive, analytical, and many others.

Example: My essay for this course will be about the history of the Roman alphabet.

journal entry: a style of personal writing, recording ideas, events of the day, responses to reading, etc.

Example: Our professor asked us to make journal entries about our opinions on the book we are reading.

academic paper: a write-up of an experiment, research project, or opinion, meant to be read by other scholars. An academic paper usually involves citations to other literature.

Example: I read an academic paper on the subject of revision and editing that was very interesting.

research report: an explanation of a research project, usually divided into subsections such as abstract, introduction, methods, results, etc.

Example: Professor Valdez's laboratory published a research report, detailing the experiment they conducted with ozone.

book review: a written opinion and analysis of a book relevant to the writer's field of study

Example: Dr. Wang wrote a very interesting book review of The Underground Railroad, which was published in the New York Review of Books.

review of literature: