Reports and Other Longer Documents

If I had to rank the three readings by the authors' names from worst to best regarding how effectively each text practiced what it preached, it would be in this order: Mathes and Stevenson, Dodge, and Vinci. I preface this response by saying that each section contained invaluable information that did open my eyes to concepts for which I was not familiar. Yet, as a student of this field, I would be remiss if I did not comment on the effectiveness of these documents. Hence, I offer my observation for each.

Mathes and Stevenson's article thoroughly detailed the problems with audience analysis and offered solutions. The strengths of this article included identifying the false assumptions by listing them, classifying the audience groups, and using visuals to further explain these concepts. However, the visuals are confusing, they use foreign terminology to explain these concepts ("bloc"), some of the examples are convoluted, and the document as a whole is very wordy. Using figure 3 on page 177 as an example, the authors attempt to explain the importance of identifying individuals rather than organizations. Although I do understand how the chart is to function, I am distracted by what Tufte would describe as "chart junk", or the large ovals in the chart. I could not understand the purpose of the ovals and thought it would be too much of a task to meander through the dense text. So my experience as the user was not a very pleasant one in this instance.

Dodge's article addressed writing abstracts. Perhaps I ranked his article higher because this particular topic is of interest to me, but I believe it mainly had to do with my ease of comprehension with the text. One factor that made this article more pleasing was the "you factor". In other words, he made the article personal and addressed me directly. Secondly, the document was four and a half pages long in contrast to the last article's seven and a half. Granted, I understand that all articles cannot be condensed to four pages, but in this instance, it was harder to read the Mathes and Stevenson article because it was dry, impersonal, and long. Finally, the examples were appropriate and the "rules" used subheadings for quick reference.

Lastly, the Vinci article was impressive to me on several levels. For starters, the title informs me immediately that this text intends to address ten points. I subconsciously think to myself, "Ten points aren't so bad. I'll read it." Also, the headings of each of the ten pitfalls reflect back to the title. Even this detail helps eliminate the chances of pitfalls three (multiple aims) and four (inconsistency) from happening. The final reason I ranked this article high was because it spoke directly to the problems that I have within my own writing. While I am stronger in some areas, I have struggled with a few pitfalls such as having multiple aims, being inconsistent, and misintroducing.

Again, in no ways did I mean to say that the Mathes/Stevenson and Dodge articles were poorly written. Rather, I now read texts for more than just content. I credit my experience with the MAPC program and now hope that I can apply the same scrutiny to my own proposal and thesis.