Writing for the academic environment is usually a matter of accomplishing or completing a task for class or for a specific subject. The end result will be to fulfill or satisfy some scholastic requirement, in order to successfully pass the class or course. Another result of such a writing is for the professor or the instructor to know how much you understand the subject, or for him of her to gauge your level of competence. On the other hand, when one writes for the professional or business environment, the result will be to fulfill a job or task that has been assigned to a person by reason of his or her specific position or job designation. A professional or business communication may be a simple memo, a report, or could be a complex and sophisticated presentation of technical and analytic data. For example, a performance report may be issued by the company to its employees, stating how the former perceives the work done by the latter. One result of a professional or business writing would be that the company is able to function and perform its primary tasks. Such writings aid the various employees of the company in order to properly coordinate and work together, since each unit or employee will be able to know what the other is doing. Also, business writing may be addressed to clients and customers. Here, the key is to know the perspective of the specific audience you are addressing. This will ensure that what you are writing is clear and will be able to easily get your massage across.
In the academic setting, the writing audience may be one's professor or instructor, or even peers and fellow students. For the professional setting, the audience may be a boss or a superior, fellow workers or employees, or sometimes it can be one's customers or clients. The occurrence of writing for multiple audiences may vary depending on the purpose of the writing or communication. For example, in both the academic and the professional setting, a presentation one has made may be viewed or addressed to several persons, thus making the writing available to multiple audiences. Lastly, the purpose of the writing or the communication will determine why the academic audience or the professional audience will read the specific document one has written.
The sources of evidence for an academic work would depend on the nature of the task or assignment. For example, a research paper's sources could include academic books, journal articles, statistical data, and other published works. An accounting student who needs to complete a balance sheet will need perhaps ledgers or books of account to be able to do the computations needed. On the other hand, the sources of evidence for writings for work may include other reports or communications from colleagues, presentations, marketing data, and even office memos and instructions. Of course, the sources of evidence would still depend on the kind of writing one has to do.
There are several organizational patterns one can use in writing, and these are: order of importance, classification, chronology, persuasion, compare and contrast, process analysis, cause and effect, problem-solution and spatial order. All of these may be used both for academic and professional or work-related writing; it would all depend on the specific kind of writing one is making, on the purpose of such, or on the target audience. An academic writing may use compare and contrast, as when one needs to compare different accounting methods to find out the most efficient and effective tool to use. A work-related writing may use the process analysis, as when a company would like to find out the efficiency of its factory or plant operations.
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