Below are some examples of the forms that public writing can take.

This fundraising Web page, created by student Justin Dart, has a very clear purpose: to crowd-source the funding to help Jey, a young street vendor in Accra, Ghana, get a college education. Justin, who was studying marketing at the University of Colorado, aimed this fundraising campaign, “Teach a Man: Wisdom,” at friends and acquaintances and urged them to share it on social media outlets. Using the Indiegogo template, Justin posted a video spelling out the background and purpose of the Indiegogo fundraiser; a short written description of the project, broken into easily digestible chunks with boldface headings; and a list of perks for donors at various levels. Other tabs offered updates that Justin posted over the course of the fundraising project, comments from donors, photos, and more. Justin and his team ended up raising enough to pay for Jey’s university tuition for his college career, housing, and incidentals.

Student Anna Mumford created and posted copies of this flyer advocating for pay raises for campus workers. Her purpose is clear: to raise awareness on her campus of what she views as highly inequitable salaries and working conditions for temporary workers. Her audience in this case is a local one that includes the temporary workers as well as the students, faculty, and administrators on her campus. Anna did not have an easy way to distribute the information electronically to temporary workers, nor was she certain that all of them had access to computers, so she chose to produce a print flyer that would be easy to distribute across campus. She wrote in Spanish (on an English-speaking campus), the home language of most of the temporary workers, to reach her target audience more effectively.

Deborah Jane and Jamie Burke collaborated to create this pitch package, to encourage backers to invest in a film based on Deborah’s play Strange Fruit: The Hip-Hopera. The pitch package includes a synopsis, individual character breakdowns, character relationship dynamics, brief biographies of the production team, and the financial analysis seen here. Deborah and Jamie created the pitch package digitally for easy distribution. To see the entire package, go here.

As with the writers of the Web page, flyer, and pitch package, yoga teacher Joelle Hann has a clear purpose in mind for her newsletter: to provide information to her audience—students and others interested in her yoga classes and developments in the yoga community. Emailing the newsletter to her subscribers allows her to reach an interested audience quickly and to provide links to more of the content she’s discussing. This format also means she can include photos, illustrations, and color to enhance her document’s design impact.

This excerpt from a report created by Deb Habib and Kaitlin Doherty of the nonprofit group Seeds of Solidarity provides information about a successful experimental recycling and composting program at a Massachusetts camp. (Only the first part of the twenty-six-page PDF is shown.) Other sections include “Project Description,” “Voices of Campers,” “Successes and Challenges,” “Summary of Key Considerations,” and an appendix with additional documents. The report appears on the organization’s Web site, which notes that Seeds of Solidarity “provid[es] people of all ages with the inspiration and practical tools to use renewable energy and grow food in their communities.” While the report offers information about an experiment that has already taken place, the document also serves to encourage and inform others who might want to create a similar program.