Professional Writing

Feature article on NAISO, November 2014

The Life of a Nontraditional MSU Student, December 2014

Feature Articles and Editorial Work for ing Magazine 

The following feature articles were published in ing Magazine during fall and winter 2014. As part of the editorial team for this arts and culture publication, I helped the group create an interesting new issue each month and maintain communication with freelancers. I participated as a member of the full editorial team, as well as on individual writing, visuals, copyediting and developmental editing teams. The opportunity to both write and edit articles allowed me to view the magazine production process from multiple perspectives.

“The Life of a Nontraditional MSU Student”: For this article, I interviewed Libby White, a mother who chose to return to college to pursue her passion for writing. As she described her experiences and aspirations, I arranged them in a framework that could best engage readers in her story.

“NAISO Maintains Cultural Connections at MSU”: I wrote a feature of the North American Indigenous Student Organization (NAISO) at MSU, describing the group’s activities and the meaning of its social and cultural support network for Indigenous students on campus. 

“The Joy of Letter Writing”: This article was a creative and descriptive piece on how letters have touched the lives of various members of the MSU community.

“Beyond the Avalanche Zone: Winter Break in British Columbia”: I wrote a personal story of visiting home in British Columbia over winter break, where my family lives off-grid on a mountain.

I am familiar with The Chicago Manual of Style, an essential resource for copyediting and proofreading. 

Copyediting and Proofreading

I have gained experience as a copyeditor through my Grammar and Style course in the Professional Writing program at Michigan State University. Here we developed a strong background in English grammar and punctuation, learning to follow Chicago Style and make good use of references such as The Chicago Manual of Style and The Copyeditor's Handbook. We learned how to collaborate with authors, write queries and memos, and use good communication practices. We edited documents, both manually using proofreaders' marks and digitally using track changes in Microsoft Word. We learned correct citation formatting in both Chicago Author-Date Style and Chicago Notes & Bibliography Style. As well as learning to proofread and copyedit with precision, we each developed a personal editing philosophy and approach to our work. I strive to maintain the author's unique voice while ensuring clarity for the reader; you can view a sample author memo describing editing suggestions I made for an advertisement featuring MSU's Young Authors Conference.

As part of my visual communications audit, I wrote an analysis of this interactive graphic from the Girl Scouts of the USA website.

Visual Rhetoric

Through a class on visual rhetoric, I learned to critique and understand the work visuals do within documents, and how they can be created and used effectively to help communicate the document's message. I gained introductory practice with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, as well as design practice in Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. Here you can view a visual communcations audit I created by analyzing materials from Girl Scouts of the USA, considering the ways in which they crafted a compelling visual message. You can also view a design I created in Microsoft Word for a verse of the poem "Indian Boarding School: The Runaways" by Louise Erdrich.

My team's website on classical rhetoric and its contemporary applications.

Classical Rhetoric Website

As an honors project for my course on Rhetoric, Persuasion, and Culture, I worked with a small team to create a central Weebly website to host our class research projects on classical rhetoric. Our goal was to explore how different cultures use classical rhetorical proofs (logos, pathos, and ethos) to build credibility, trust, logic, and emotional connection. We used interviews and scholarly research to draw our conclusions, and also created podcasts. As well, we researched and outlined how our websites could be used to teach classical and cultural rhetoric in a variety of undergraduate courses. Classical rhetoric is still relevant today: to make any piece of writing effective, it's essential to consider the piece's audience, context and purpose.