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ENGL 420: Business Writing

This overview of ENGL 420 provides core information about the course for Purdue students, faculty, and academic advisors who have general questions about the course. Questions about a specific section of the course should be directed to the individual instructor.

ENGL 420 is also offered as an online course (ENGL 420 DIST). Visitors and prospective students can read our Guide to Online Courses in Professional Writing to learn about how this online version of the course is structured.

A small number of sections are designated as 420ENTR every spring and fall, Business Writing for Entrepreneurs.

Course Background

English 420, Business Writing, is a course offered by the Department of English every Fall, Spring, Maymester, and Summer semester. Professional Writing serves an array of Purdue students with majoring in the areas of technology, management, consumer and family sciences, liberal arts, and agriculture.

Sample syllabus: ENGL 420 DIST, Spring 2024. 

Catalog Description

Catalog: Workplace writing in networked environments for management contexts. Emphasizes organizational context, project planning, document management, ethics, research, team writing. Typical genres include management memos, reports, letters, e-mail, resumes (print and online), oral presentations. Credits: 3.00

Official Course Description

English 420 helps students become better business writers, across multiple global audiences, for multiple purposes, and in a variety of media. The work of the course is centered on presenting business-related material in written and visual formats that demonstrate an awareness of audience needs and contexts, effectively achieve implicit and explicit rhetorical purposes, and work to effectively address workplace, social, or global problems.

Course Outcomes

These are general course goals outlined by the Professional Writing Program. Instructors will articulate how each specific project incorporates the course goals.

  • Use professional writing theories and approaches to analyze and solve business problems individually and in teams
  • Communicate market-driven information and organizational processes via a variety of media, genres, technologies, and presentations to a range of audiences and stakeholders
  • Innovate written conventions and expectations to both professional and non-professional audiences with changing organizational needs
  • Apply primary and secondary research methods and strategies to produce professional documents
  • Design documents with an awareness of the human needs of users, paying special attention to accessibility, cultural diversity, and global sensitivity
  • Interpret, contextualize, explain, and visualize data sets in specific rhetorical contexts or problems