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Written Professional Communication
Assignment 2—Analyzing a Piece of Professional Writing
For this assignment, I’d like you to write an analysis of piece of professional writing, using as a
starting point the ideas Walker Gibson offers in the two chapters you read from his book
Persona: A Style Study for Readers and Writers. Choose a piece of work-related writing and
describe the persona (the voice or speaker) created by its language. Evaluate the persona
you’ve described in terms of the other factors Gibson mentions: the purpose, context, audience,
and subject of the text. Discuss how effective you think this persona is in helping the text
achieve its purpose, considering its context, audience, and subject. To what extent is your
chosen text a successful piece of professional writing?
Here’s a full works cited entry for Persona (using MLA 9 style):
Gibson, Walker. Persona: A Style Study for Readers and Writers. Random House, 1969.
In the chapters you read, Gibson uses examples from novels--book-length, fictional narratives-written from a first-person point of view, the point of view of a particular character, an imaginary
“I.” However, according to Gibson, all writing--not just fictional, literary writing--implies a
speaker. In the second chapter of Persona, titled “Reading the News,” he states, “[T]here is
always an ‘I’ whether he is expressed or not. There is always a character speaking, a voice we
are asked to tune in to . . .” (18).
You may choose any piece of professional writing that you think will yield an insightful analysis.
It may be something that you wrote or that someone else wrote as part of a job or of the process
of applying for a job: for example, a report, a letter, a résumé, a memo, a Web page, a blog entry,
or an e-mail. You might want to choose a text that represents a kind of writing you expect to be
doing in the profession you plan to enter.
For your analysis, you are not required to use Gibson’s categories of persona (talker and writer)
nor are you required to use the features he describes as characteristic of each of these categories
(periodic vs. loose sentences, for example). However, like Gibson, you’ll need to work with the
language of the text closely and carefully, using specific evidence from the text to illustrate
your claims. After all, as he points out, “[The speaker] is inferred entirely out of the language;
everything we know about him comes from the words before us on the page” (4). Be sure to
quote specific words, phrases, and sentences, and explain how they substantiate what you say
about the persona of the text.
You should be sure to have access to your chosen text so that you can refer to it when you revise
this essay, but you should not submit it with your essay. Here’s why: when writers provide the
entire text, they seem to be handing over the responsibility for finding evidence for their ideas to
the readers. It’s the writer’s job--in this case, your job--to choose what evidence to include in
your essay, evidence you will use to explain your ideas and convince your audience to take them
seriously. (After all, as I understand it, when scientists report on their research, they do not
generally include all their raw data. They select and organize the data to illustrate their findings.)
Continues on reverse side.
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For this assignment, you do not need to provide a “Works Cited” page; however, you do need to
let readers know when you’re using other people’s words and ideas. You can do this by
consistently introducing material from other sources and adding page numbers at the end of the
borrowed material. (This is usually at the end of a sentence.) You may recognize this as the
conventional style of MLA in-text citations. Here’s an example:
In “Reading the First-Person-Singular,” the first chapter of his book Persona: A Style
Study for Readers and Writers, Walker Gibson defines the persona as “the created
speaker” (4).
This essay should be 4-5 pages long. This version will be a draft, which I will grade as a
homework assignment (on a “check, check-minus, no credit” basis) and which you will revise
later for a grade.
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Your essay should conform to the “Formatting Checklist” included below.
Formatting Checklist
□ 12-point Times New Roman font
□ One-inch margins on all sides (aligned on the left)
□ Double-spaced throughout (extra space between paragraphs eliminated)
□ Page numbers in the upper right-hand corner.
□ The following information in the upper left-hand corner of the first page:
Your Name
Assignment 2
□ Title centered and below identifying information
□ First lines of paragraphs indented one-half inch