Created in Spring 2018 for ENGL 7750

Description

Two articles written about the same topic (soil microbes), yet are targeted to two different non-expert audiences.

Critical Reflection

I wrote a lot about microbes during Spring 2018. It began with an annotated bibliography - which thankfully I learned how to create in ENGL 6715!

I also wrote a New York Times-style book review of a book about microbes, and these documents: an article written to the spec I found for the magazine Mother Earth News, and a document that intends to inform farmers about the benefits of soil microbes.

It was a very interesting exercise to consider how the same core information can be organized and packaged differently for different audiences. This is a process I intend to use in the future. I often develop a general curiosity about scientific topics, but when I write about science, I need to focus on what the audience wants or needs from my research rather than just a brain dump of every little cool thing I learned.

While writing about microbes, I also thought about Bernadette Longo's book Spurious Coin: A History of Science, Management, and Technical Writing.¹ Reading that book encouraged me to think about who gets to create knowledge, and why it is accepted as knowledge in a given culture. This theme has captured my attention again in Public Interest Writing.²

Overall Satisfaction on a Scale of 1 to 7: 6