Response to Sarah's Chapter 8

Like Sarah, this class is turning out to be completely different than I expected. I was expecting the class to be cut, dry, and about how to write the boring memos that I'm sure we've all read. I like that the expected work from us is supposed to be concise and get to the point right away. Some of the papers I reviewed for classmates in my ecology lab were very long and drawn out. Much of the time they spent writing to "fill space" instead of presenting needed information. I'm guilty of filling space in papers myself as I'm sure we all are. I have tried to be concise while still presenting all the necessary information and analysis when drafting scientific papers.

Chapters 8, 19

Simplify your sentences. Use an active voice. Chose the best vocabulary for your communication. Think of your audience as you're writing your communication. This summarizes chapter 8. I love this chapter because it gives me some basic guidelines and tips for creating an active voice. Guideline 3 details some of the reasons to use the active voice over the passive voice, though it does go on to give a couple of examples where the passive voice is appropriate.

At the end of chapter 19, Figure 19.2 is a great tool for managing projects conducted for clients. I will be using this to help organize and work on creating an instruction manual for the tech team at my church campus. I'll also be drawing on the information presented in chapter 16 (which I re-read this week) about working with a team to create a communication. My intension is to create a manual that will benefit a new team member as well as offer trouble shooting advice to veteran tech team members. I will be including two other team members in drafting this. One from the audio side and one from the video side. It should be fun...

Response to Mark, Chapters 6,7

Extending on from my last post, I think that keeping the information concise and useful for the reader really is half the battle. The other half, I think is what Mark has mentioned. Organize the material you present in a way so that your reader can quickly understand and use this information. I like Mark's mention of visual elements to help the reader better understand the information presented on the page. We got practice doing this with the group exercise of re-writing a technical publication last week.

Reading on Chapters 6,7

Conducting reader centered research is such a different way of thinking and working from any research conducted before. This 'new' process seems more critical of the resources that are found or used as it's focus must be beneficial to the reader. One mistake I come across in the scientific community is that they present massive amounts of data and let that be the persuasive voice of the paper. Presenting data is not necessarily a bad thing, and it does need to be presented, discussed and used. I've even encountered this same style in one of our local newspapers.

Response to Seth, Chapters 4,5

Seth made a great point about the ineffective use of graphics within text. . How many documents have we read where the graphic either had no context or even bearing on the subject? It is distracting and ineffective.

chapters 4,5

Guideline 2: Organize around your readers tasks

This portion of Chapter 4 is something that I will need to focus on as I create my own set of instructions for the Tech team at my church. What tasks are they performing? What is the “best way” to go about this? How can I streamline the process of set-up? But most importantly, how do I organize all this information so that it is easily accessible and usable? These are some of the questions that need answering.