Writing Policy
Today's Advertising and Public Relations specialists must be able -- through spoken, written, and visual communication-- to connect employers to employees, businesses to the public, products to consumers, governments to citizens, and mass media to audiences. To meet the entry-level demands of their career field, baccalaureate degree candidates in Advertising and Public Relations must be able to produce writing with these qualities:
Communicability and Organization
- Fluent Expression
- Clearly stated and logically developed ideas
- Coherently arranged materials
Appopriate Content
- Substantial relevant material
- Thoroughly developed central idea
Proper Diction and Effective Style
- Accurate word choice/usage
- Strategic tone
- Appropriate level of style
- Proper sentence construction
Effective Language Usage
- Good sentence construction
- Few shifts in tense/point of view/antecedents
- Few misplaced modifiers/dangling constructions/awkward
- Passive verbs/errors in subject-verb agreement
Effective Mechanics
- Proper bibliographical citation (e.g. APA, MLA, Chicago)
- Minimal errors in spelling, punctuation, paragraphing
The Institute Writing Policy states that students "will be evaluated in terms of their writing proficiency by the end of their third year" (D.3). In the APR program, this assessment takes place all through the student's academic career.
Throughout their course work in the major, students regularly complete writing assignments. In all courses, instructors monitor the quality of students' writing to ensure they develop the necessary abilities at an appropriate rate. Students with writing deficiencies are advised on how to raise their abilities to an acceptable level and, if necessary, may be referred to the Academic Support Center (ASC) for remedial instruction.
In the latter case, the course professor who makes the referral will follow-up with the ASC instructor to monitor the student's progress.
In addition, all APR students must take two upper-division writing courses: Copywriting and Visualization, and Public Relations Writing. Students must pass all required upper-division writing courses with a grade of "C" or better. A student who receives a grade lower than "C" in either of these courses will, after consultation with his or her APR advisor, either retake the course or be referred to the Academic Support Center for remedial instruction. In the latter case, the advisor will follow-up with the ASC instructor to monitor the student's progress.
APR has a zero tolerance policy for plagiarism.