Mission: Omission - Teaching Students to Leave Out Information in Professional Writing

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2020-04-28

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In the long tenuous relationship between higher education and the workforce, a lot of hand-wringing has occurred regarding the way that students are taught to write in college vs. how they are expected to write in the workforce. This invariably has led to an underprepared crop of entry-level graduates who, “struggle in their transfer of writing skills learned in college to the writing tasks of the workplace” (Kohn, 2015) One employer recently noted that recent graduates have a, “real issue with putting together short, concise, and clear written communication about something, whether it's a project or a problem that they're trying to solve. This is a real problem, and it's getting worse, not better." (Sparks, 2018) While this problem cannot and will not be solved in a brief presentation at the 2020 Gen Ed Conference, this presentation, entitled Mission: Omission - Teaching Students to Leave Out Information in Professional Writing will at least draw attention to the virtue of teaching brevity in professional writing and will demonstrate why two of the standard six questions of non-fiction writing (Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?) are best left unanswered.

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