Moitoso

Kayla Moitoso

Fredrik DeBoer

Public Writing

May 5th 2011

This semester in public writing, I learned many things that will help me in my

future as a professional and a writer. Within the class the projects that we were

assigned to do helped me understand all the different parts of public writing and

what public writing entails. When we picked a certain issue it showed us how that

issue related to the community everyone involved in the community and how public

writing can affect the issue within the community that it lays.

This semester I feel that I accomplished many things within this course. I feel

that as a public relations major, I am more prepared to know what public writing is

and how it can affect my job as a professional. I also accomplished learning the

skills that are needed to use public writing effectively.

Public writing to me is a tool that can be influential and promote a change in a

community or even a country. Pubic writing if used correctly can change the way people

think in an activist, political and even theological way. It can be helpful tools for

politicians, celebrities and local community people who want to make change. We can all

use public writing in many different medias, channels and publications.

Public writing is a tool that is meant to evoke the change in activist and political

situations. People who are apart of organizations such as mothers against drunk driving,

students against drunk driving and people who are apart of the “Click it or Ticket”
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campaign use public writing as a way to promote change within drinking and driving and

safety measures. Another form of public writing that can be effective is letters to the

editors, these are meant to evoke change within the legislative and government systems.

Public writing is very complex but if used the correct ways can benefit the community or

publics that it reaches. The change that could come from effective public writing could

ultimately change ways of thinking and a community in whole.

Some of the problems that I worked on solving within this course were choosing a

topic that interested me and thought of ways that it affects the community as a whole.

During this semester I chose to focus on the topic of teen pregnancy in high schools and

safe sex programs that can influence teens on having safe sex. I found this topic to be

very interesting because I know many girls who were teen mothers and I also work with

high school girls teaching softball. I found that this topic had a great deal of information

and studies that proved that this issue is not just a local issue but an issue that is affecting

high school adolescents around the country. The project of picking an issue that we were

interested in and really understanding the issue at hand help me see how public writing

can be an effective tool to get information out to the public and communities that the

issue correlates to.

Another problem that I had to face while in this course was to know how to write

effectively and straight to the point to get my message and issue across. I felt like this

was one of the hardest problems that I faced during this course because it was a different

style of writing that I was used to be past journalism and writing classes. I went about this

issue by going through my papers and seeing what the most important information was

there that would be effective in my public writing and what information was ineffective. I
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think that these problems and issues were relevant to public writing because it helped me

understand what effective public writing is and how it can be used within a real life

situation.

I think that this was a very interesting course; it was different that every other

writing course that I have taken within my college career. I felt that this course prepared

me for what type of writing I will be faced with in my future and how I can use public

writing effectively when I am in the real world. I retained skills that I will need in a

future internship, job and as an effective writer.