7c Become familiar with a discipline’s preferred genres.

As you write in various disciplines, pay attention to the genre, or type of writing, assigned. Each genre is a category of writing meant for a specific purpose and audience, with its own set of agreed-upon expectations and conventions for style, structure, and format. When you are asked to write a business memo for a management course, a lab report for a biology class, or a case study for an education class, you are being asked to adopt a discipline’s method for communicating among its members. When you are assigned a type of document you are unfamiliar with, seek samples from your instructor or your school’s writing center.