Writer's Journal #15

When it comes to writing, very few of us think about our obligations to our readers and especially ethical obligations. When we write, we are trying to communicate something to our readers within our writing. To fail in the communication of written work would be failing in our writer’s obligation. For example, if I write an article on how to make key lime pie but I leave out important details like putting the pie in the oven at 425 or leave out certain ingredients, then I end up setting up my reader for failure. This would be failing in fulfilling my obligations to my readers. My readers need to be able to successfully understand what I am saying or, at the very least, trying to say. Now this is more of an instructive written work so its job is to be instructive. A writer’s language choice may also have an a part to do with ethical obligations. I would never write anything that downgraded women or was racist for example. By writing content like that, it would be completely disrespectful and wrong. It would be prejudice and if we have learned anything from America, it is that racism and sexism is not okay.

Addressing those ethical obligations to stakeholders is an important part of writing. The stakeholders when it comes to not writing clearly and specifically would be all the people who tried to make the recipe and failed. They would be the ones directly affected by the unethical obligation failure. This would cause the stakeholders to be upset and frustrated. The writer would lose all credibility. To avoid this, the writer should write clearly and in as much detail as possible. When writing instructive things, you should write it so that anybody from a 7 year old to a 90 year old can do what you wrote about successfully. The other part we talked about in the previous paragraph was the use of certain language and perhaps even the voice of the writing. Using profanity, sexism, racism, and other things such as these make people feel uncomfortable and it is simply morally wrong in general. The stakeholders in these examples would be children seeing profanity, women being ridiculed, and different races being discriminated against. To address these ethical obligations to stakeholders, one must be extra careful when writing. You should always have an inclusive and inviting feel to your writing. Make sure to consider how you would feel if someone was writing things about you like that. For example, I am Russian. If people were writing how Russians are all communist and love Stalin, it would make me really upset. We already get teased enough about being Russian spies and always being serious. I am serious though!

We need to make sure that as writer’s, we are remembering that our job as writer’s is to communicate to our readers. The only exception to that is in your personal diary! The rest of the time, we are trying to talk to, convince, educate, or share with our readers. We must do our part to be respectful to our readers and do our ethical obligations to our readers.