Welcome to HPRO 543

Winter 2014

This is a course in writing for publication; it is not a remedial writing course, nor a Freshman English composition course. To write for publication, you need to become familiar with the potential journals and magazines in which you are most likely to get published. For professional journals, this means peer-reviewed journals. For popular writing, this can be a wide variety of magazines or popular publications. While you may feel as though you are getting a split personality trying to write both, it will teach you the skill of adapting to your readership by the style in which you write.

A second key is to have something worthwhile to write about. If you do not come with ready-made topics (such as a report of a community project in which you have been involved, a research paper you may have written for another course, or the literature review for your dissertation proposal), looking at potential journals and magazines may help you pick a topic. Picking a good topic is essential to writing publishable articles, so choose well. You may write on the same topic for both the professional and the popular papers, but you will do so in a very different style. Bounce your ideas off your adviser or contact me via e-mail/CANVAS. The professional article can take several forms [see Module 3 for sample articles].

Please note the way in which you will be graded. Fifty percent of your grade is getting assignments in on time. You will not be graded on each assignment, only that it is in on time. The reason for this is to give you opportunity to practice your preparation and writing skills, get feedback and suggestions for improvement, so that your final paper(s) represent your best efforts. It also keeps you on track, from procrastinating. You do not succeed in preparing a publishable quality article by pulling “all-nighters” at the end of the course! Don't rush ahead of the weekly assignments and attempt to write your complete paper in the first few weeks. The assignments are spaced in sequence, and should be written as parts which you then combine in your first draft. The final paper(s) represent the other 50% of your grade. Remember, there is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting! The real value in this course is writing and getting feedback to improve your writing, so don’t get your tail in a knot if you get a lot of feedback. Just figure, “I’m getting my money’s worth!”