MECH 226 Quiz 1

Clarity

must be understood the first time it is read by its intended audience

Completeness

must contain all the necessary information for the audience to understand a situation and follow up on it

Conciseness

must be clear, be complete, but do so in as few words as necessary

accessibility

must be organized and tagged (heading, bullets, etc) to make information easy to find

correctness

must be free of grammatical and mechanical errors

accuracy

must be free of factual errors

The Writing Process

1. Determine the purpose of your document

2. Consider the audience

3. Brainstorm the content

4. Organize the Content

5. Determine the correct writing style

6. Write the first draft quickly, without stopping

7. revise in stages

1 Determine the Purpose

Focus on what the document is intended to accomplish

2 Consider the Audience

different audiences require different kinds of information/persuasion

3 Brainstorm the Content

Set down the info that your reader needs

4 Organize the Content

reorganize brainstormed info for proper flow

How to organize message

Summary, Context, Details, Next Step

5 Determine the Style

some situations require greater formality

6 Write the first draft quickly

Determine what you are going to write, in what order, and in what tone

7 Revise in Four Stages

Edit from large changes to small:

1. Substantive Editing

2. Stylistic Editing

3. Copy Editing

4. Proofreading

Substantive Editing

adjust and reorganize the content

stylistic editing

create proper style and tone, and ensure clarity and coherence

copy editing

edit for grammar, punctuation, and mechanics

proofreading

check the document for errors of formatting or expression

Technical Sentences

1. Subject

2. Clear, concrete verb/action item

3. edit sentence for conciseness

4. edit for clarity (no jargon or big words)

real subject

best when subject is topic of the sentence, subject is the main noun

meaningless starts

Avoid there sentence openers, avoid it sentence openers(unless clearly points to a specific referent in the preceding sentence)

Active Voice

‘I did it’ over ‘it was done by me’

Avoid Nominalizations

Nouns manufactured from verbs (give consideration/considered, had a discussion/discussed)

Edit for Conciseness

• Delete Needless Prefaces

• Sentences < 20 words, Paragraphs < 7 lines on average,

• avoid weak verbs (my recommendation is vs I recommend)

• Avoid Excessive prepositions (except for instead of with the exception of)

• Make negatives positive

• Delete needless qualifiers (I feel, it seems…)

Avoid Redundancy

terrible tragedy, several different, completely eliminate

Edit for Clarity

• break up chains of nouns

• use simple language

• avoid jargon

Paragraph Strategies

1. Keep Paragraphs short, simple, and easy to understand

2. Use a topic sentence to orient the reader and enable scanning the text

3. Make paragraphs unified

4. Make paragraphs complete

5. Make paragraphs cohesive

Keep Paragraphs Short

• sentences < 20 words on average

• Every sentence express only single thought

• paragraphs < 7 lines on average

• every paragraph a simple idea

• one sentence paragraphs are valid

Sentences are intended to…

persuade, inform, or instruct

topic sentences benefit

• quicker comprehension of paragraph

• easier to scan in the whole report

Unified paragraphs

• topic sentences announce topic of paragraph

• only topic-relevant info in the paragraph

complete paragraphs

• topic sentences announce topic

• puts all relevant info into paragraph

cohesive paragraphs

• the way sentences link/work together

• logical relationships are obvious

Strategies to achieve cohesion

1. Given-new repetition

2. Transition Words

3. Variegated Sentence Patterns

4 Grammatical Types of Sentences

1. Simple Sentences

2. Coordinated Sentences

3. Subordinated Sentences

4. Embedded Sentences

Simple sentences

provide no clue how the sentence relate to one another, choppy

Coordinated Sentences

• combine sentences with coordinating conjunction (and, for, so, nor, yet, but, or)

• use comma before

Subordinated Sentences

• clause that cannot stand by itself as a sentence

• usually introduced by subordinated conjunction (because, whereas, even though)

Embedded Sentences

sentence that has been turned into a phrase