Welcome to the Vidcast of The Owl at Purdue, where we deepen our knowledge of rhetoric,
logic, invention, and communication. Whether you want to know more about the ancient history of
rhetoric or get some advice on how to choose the best medium for your message, the AL
Vidcasts are here to guide you. White Papers: An Introduction to the Genre and Its Expectations,
a Vidcast by Katy Trout Taylor in cooperation with the Purdue Online Writing Lab. What is a
white paper or background report? What contents make up white papers and who reads them? This
Vidcast explains the genre and expectations of this style of report writing. Enjoy the Vidcast!
No matter our profession, we educate ourselves about breaking issues in
our fields by doing background research. Our research might be formal or informal,
conducted in the library or at the conference table, by asking other people in our field or
in related fields what they've heard about new topics and trends. White papers provide
background for decisions. The white paper is intended to update long-term professionals
on current trends and developments in their fields. It's often written by newly graduated
professionals who bring new research from their University training. So, there's a good chance
you'll want to experience writing white papers before you start your first post-college job.
Since white papers are written about a variety of topics from economic approaches to marketing
strategies, from new social media trends to legal and governmental updates, they are often
profoundly influenced by the particular discipline that they are written within or written for. White
paper reports can be internal, which means that they are written for people in a private business
setting with a goal of informing a company about a current trend in research, or external, which
means that they are written to inform a public audience within a particular discipline or field.
At your first post-college job, for example, your employer might ask you
to write a white paper on new social media trends that the company could
use to stay relevant and up-to-date in your field. And, in the resulting white paper,
you would inform or update your company about new online collaboration software like LinkedIn,
Twitter, PBworks, Skype, or Google Docs, asking how is this new social media changing the nature
of business communication, and how business is conducted within and outside of my company,
and how can we, our company, not fall behind in this changing technological landscape? If
you wrote this report internally for your company only, you might overview your particular company's
previous approaches to social media, including their mistakes or their embarrassing moments.
If, however, you wrote this report for an external audience of people in your entire field,
or even publicly for your potential customers, you would likely speak more generally about social
media in your field and avoid discussing your company in any negative light. For this reason,
it's important to be rhetorical about external whitepapers, anticipating negative associations
that your research might have on your company. For example, you wouldn't want to write an
external white paper about marketing strategies that successfully manipulate people. This would
represent your company in a potentially negative way to the general public or to your field.
Some businesses, like marketing and research firms that are hired by larger companies, create
informative white papers that are really meant to attract business customers. Such corporate white
papers function more like advertisements, telling you as a business owner or worker
why your company needs to hire their firm. This approach to white papers isn't necessarily sneaky,
but it does remind us to question the information presented in white papers because they're often
written by companies who have some kind of investment in the topic they're presenting on.
In other words, white papers are sponsored by businesses and companies, and therefore we should
be cautious of viewing all white paper reports as neutral or objective informative research. Take,
for instance, this white paper written by Best Buy CEO about his use of Twitter as a business
leader. In this external white paper published in the Harvard Business Review, the CEO writes about
his caring interactions with customers and boys, with a goal of emphasizing the positive aspects of
himself and his company. As you begin to write your own white paper, it's important to ask,
what does an excellent white paper do? First, it takes a unique and clear approach to a specific
topic or trend, sharing research that is up to date. Second, it's written to a specific audience,
using arguments, claims, and information that work well to inform that audience about the
topic or trend under discussion. And three, it provides thorough research, including at least
five diverse sources through a variety of research approaches, including internet pool research,
magazine newsletter and book searches, as well as interviews or discussions with professionals in
your field. In this way, white papers differ from recommendation reports and feasibility
reports because they do not necessarily reach an exact decision about a topic. They don't tell you,
for example, what action a group should take. Instead, they offer background information upon
which decisions could be made in the future, thus functioning somewhat like research papers.
Successful white papers include six sections. The executive summary begins the white paper, and
in this brief overview, you should introduce and summarize your research, as well as establish the
expectations for what's to follow in your report. In your executive summary, you want to make
sure to state clearly how your research topic is relevant or useful, either generally to businesses
in your industry or specifically to your company. Give us a good reason as company executives to
want to read this. The next section is typically an introduction. Your introduction should prepare
your readers in more detail for the main issues of the paper. You may choose to begin by defining the
major terms in your report or by giving a specific anecdote about how this topic is important to your
company or industry. Avoid roadmapping, in the situation by which we mean just stating
the section headings of the report. Set up your audience's expectations for the whole report and
especially make its purpose and relevance clear, but there's not necessarily a need to provide
a table of contents here. The next section of a white paper is often called previous approaches.
In this section, you provide an overview of previous approaches or strategies that people
have used regarding this topic, either at your company for an internal report, or in your larger
field for an external report. For example, if you're informing your company about new techniques
for sampling groundwater, you'll need to discuss the techniques they already use traditionally in
your field. If you're informing your company about social media trends, you might explain how team
members currently collaborate. Maybe they use email primarily, and how those strategies could
use improvement. Maybe there are more organized ways to work online as a team that you can plan to
introduce in your white paper. The most important part of the white paper is the next section where
you deliver new findings. Your job in the report is to both present and interpret the data on
your topic for your audience. Data or research does not speak for itself. It requires that you
explain its relevance clearly and directly in a way that is understandable to your audience but
also respectful of them. What's most important for your ethos and credibility as a researcher is that
you make it clear in the report where data comes from, including your infographics, and that you
integrate it into the report by explaining how it's relevant to your report's stated purpose.
You wrap up the white paper with a conclusion section where you discuss your research findings
in comparison to the previous approaches that you overviewed in the beginning. Although conclusions
of white papers don't have to suggest specific strategies or solutions, they should offer insight
into the topic or concern that instigated the research in the first place. Most white
papers end with some kind of source citation or bibliography. Be sure to list all of your sources
and reference materials in the section at the end of your white paper. These can be designed
to fit unobtrusively near the conclusion of your report, or they can be given their own page. The
idea is to make sure that your readers can find the same articles, websites, and books that you
cited in your text. While it's not required that you follow a citation style like MLA or APA,
such a guide is often familiar to readers in your field and can help them recognize the format and
find your sources more quickly. Therefore, it's often a good idea to stick with such a style.
Formatting over all your sections don't have to have these boring titles like "New Findings" and
"Previous Approaches." Get creative! Name the sections according to the information you'll
present within them. For example, instead of "Previous Approaches," you might write "Previous
Strategies for Collaborating Online" or "Previous Techniques for Sampling Groundwater." Your
sections should reflect the knowledge that people in your field share and recognize and inspire
them to read each section carefully. This has been a presentation of white papers written and
produced by KD Trout Taylor and brought to you in collaboration with the Purdue Online Writing Lab.