Professional writing is typically done for a variety of readers, in a number of different styles, for all sorts of purposes. TC 313 is designed to help upper-level students develop communication skills that are needed for successful professional careers. Ultimately, of course, you will learn more about professional writing by actually doing it, day by day, in real-world settings. In the meantime though, you can get a good head start by thinking about the principles we will be focusing on in this course. Professional work is usually devoted to solving identifiable problems in an organizational context.
Communication is an essential part of such work.
Good professional writing is fundamentally rhetorical in the sense that it produces a desired effect on readers and gets them to do things. Many of your most important readers in the real world will be under great time pressure and therefore will be unable to devote full attention to what you have written. At the same time they may be quite ignorant of what you have written about. In short, they will not be the ideal readers you are accustomed to having in school. You must be prepared for this and write accordingly.