As a student in an American college, you may be given the opportunity to write texts that address three distinct "discourse communities"—that is, communities of readers with shared interests and expectations. These three communities are the creative writing community, the academic writing community, and the professional and technical writing community. Over time, conventions emerge among writers in these discourse communities about the best ways to research, organize, and transmit documents that address specific audiences and purposes. These conventions are commonly called "genres" or "forms." This section of the open text at Writing Commons explores some of the common genres of documents produced by writers of these discourse communities.
Creative Writing
Chiefly seeks pleasure and entertainment
Academic Writing
Professors and students often consult texts to develop new knowledge or to demonstrate an understanding of existing knowledge.
Professional Writing
Employers, employees, and clients focus on business matters or the explanation/use of technical information.
While Writing Commons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, derivative works of Writing Commons must include this note on all printed/displayed pages: "This is a derivative work of Writing Commons, http://writingcommons.org, a peer-reviewed, open-education resource. As a derivative, it may contain work that is not peer-reviewed or a part of Writing Commons."