Call to Write, Third edition Chapter Six, Public Documents: Codifying Beliefs and Practices

Overview  Explores the genre, which includes the public documents that are a part of our daily lives  They “articulate the principles and procedures that organize and guide” the lives of a group of people (186).  Examples include marriage vows, contracts, wills, codes of conduct, the constitution, and mission statements.

What is the call to write public documents?  Our need to establish institutions (such as schools and churches)  Our need to create social order (in our legal system)  Our need for interaction  These documents also serve to promote social change.

Readings  Abraham Verghese, from My Own Country  Ellen Cushman, from The Struggle and the Tools

Manifestos  Call of the World Social Movements  Hacker’s Manifesto

Petitions  Stop the Aerial Slaughter of Alaska’s Wolves!  Call for the Human Rights in Russia  Jason Pierce, Tiger Woods-Stand up for Equality-Augusta National Golf Club

Visual design  Paula Scher, Defective Equipment: The Palm Beach County Ballot

Writing assignment  See page 209 for four options: writing an analysis of encounters with public documents as literacy events, doing a rhetorical analysis, or writing a manifesto or petition.  Your instructor will let you know whether your class will be doing this particular assignment, and provide you with additional guidelines.

Readability and design  See pages for a list of eight things to keep in mind.  Features that add readability include: title, logo, white space, headings, bullets, and font styles.  There is also a reference to Chapter 19, which gives more information about design.

Tone and rhetorical distance  Tone establishes relationship to readers.  Informal—first person, addresses readers as “you.”  Standard—fairly formal, plain.  Official—creates the greatest sense of distance with its legalistic style.

Parallelism  When you create headers, make sure that they are parallel, or similar in structure.  The text points out that the Call of World Social Movements does not use parallel structures in its section headings, while it does use parallelism in the document itself.  Talked about on pages

Student Companion Website  Go to the student side of the Web site for exercises, chapter overviews, and links to writing resources for this chapter:  Click on the textbook cover, and then select Student Resources.