Katz's "Ethics of Expediency"

Katz's article reveals that blindly following guidelines and not being critical of writing can be dangerous. Terms like ethics, rhetoric, and truth are not safe, angelic, objective words. His Ethics of Expediency is a prime example. To Hitler, Just, and the Nazis, it was ethical to “reduce” the number of “units” by efficiently and expediently stuffing more of them in trucks because it was for the good of their people. Obviously, this tacit was a way of using terms, symbols, expediency, and persuasion to justify, trivialize, and cast a blind eye on the senseless genocide of thousands.

Language has everything to do with ethics and should not be used as a means to an end. Katz's article argues that the problem lies in the various definitions of what is or is not ethical, which relates to Kenneth Burke's terministic screens concept. Essentially, writing or doing something expediently neither qualifies it as good nor ethical. Professional writers must be aware of what they write, what the goals are, how it affects the audience, and what the ethical implications are.

A Word on Ethics

Before coming to Clemson, I never would have coupled technical writing/editing with ethics. To me, technical writing was completely objective and did not need to be contested because it was writing that would help others to achieve a task. I was utterly misguided and wrong.

On the contrary, words are collected, assembled, and expressed with particular purposes in mind. The effects of these words and how they are presented is where ethics is important. As the texts from this section of Harty's book shows, sometimes editors and writers unintentionally misinform their audience because of carelessness or lack of attention to the document purpose. However, being careless and unintentionally misleading are not mistakes that should be blindly forgiven. Winsor's article about the O-ring echoes this very point.

Many companies try to establish and enforce their codes of ethics through the use of mission statements, company "hero" stories, and employee handbooks. However, professionals must be able to discern what is ethical from what is not and then act accordingly. As Dan Jones' article discusses, the internet is an excellent opportunity for many people to use it in unethical ways. Hence, it is vital that professionals, particularly professional communicators, understand the ramifications of doing their jobs properly and ethically. Ethics is about distinguishing right from wrong and making appropriate choices that will not be harmful to oneself or others.

Resumes and Other Written Materials on a Job Search

Reading the the two articles by Graber and Dikel and Roehm, I thought that the information they mentioned was pretty self explanatory. On the contrary, many people make this very mistake and end up with terribly written representations of themselves. This "know it all" approach is also the same attitude that many people use when arranging and distributing their resumes. However, as these texts reveal, the best resume to use is one written specifically for the sought-after job: not a one size fits all resume.

I found Dikel and Roehm's article extremely helpful and insightful. For example, having used various methods to apply for jobs previously, I had a firm understanding on how each of the four resume types should be formatted. However, I neither understood how to get the margins "just right" so that the document looked nice in email format nor know the benefit and purpose of saving a resume as text only. Also, I always assumed that filling out the field-entry resume form on websites was the "best" way of getting my resume noticed. Now that I think about it, I actually avoided copying and pasting my resume into the field for fear of it reaching the hiring manager and looking awkward. Actually, I didn't think the fields made the resumes look badly until I was on an interview and two upper management officials had to fumble through 3-5 pages of resume jibberish. Even though the managers themselves brought it to the interview to ask me questions about it, I was so happy that I brought extra hard copies of my standard resume. After they realized the information was the same, they used the one-page copies I brought with me.