Policy and procedure documents play an important role in developing and maintaining a consistent quality of interaction in organizations. Unfortunately, the pedagogical and research literatures are weak in this area. Here, we attempt to initiate further discussion by defining and describing policy and procedure documents, and identify a third kind, work instructions. A genre approach is used to outline characteristics based on information type, institutional purpose, and organizational functions. Rhetorical, audience, and functional linguistics analyses are used to describe more specific characteristics.
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