Chapter 1 Exercise 1

The purpose of this exercise is to become familiar with the different types of
technical writing, as well as to gain familiarity with the formatting of a technical
memo. The audience for this exercise is explicitly listed as Professor Intawiwat. The
context would seem to be a professional context due to the fact that the choices
given for sites to examine were either academic, business, or governmental in some
sense. Bearing that context in mind I adhered to the traditional memo format that is
used within the text book.
Chapter 7 Exercise 1
The context, as listed in the prompt of this exercise, is that of a business sense. The
audience of this particular exercise is Robert Davidson, which I believe is
representative of a generic boss/higher-up role. This exercise not only deals with
issues in communication with a superior but also in dealing with a superior who is of
the other gender, which can contain some subtleties that need to be navigated. In
the situation listed there is a need to be tactful with the writing therefore I kept that
in mind. I really enjoyed this exercise because it gave me a new perspective on
dealing with situations and writing a business correspondence that needed to be
delicately worded.
Bad/Good News Letter
The situation presented for the bad/good news letters was that the mother of a
passenger whose son had died on an Oceanic flight was trying to find out when she
could expect a settlement. The first task was to break some sort of bad news to this
person. Due to the fact that this person has gone through a very difficult situation
this had to be done in a very sensitive manner. Shortly after this letter we were
tasked to write a letter to the same person giving them good news. In this letter I
was able to tell the addressee that the settlement had been finalized and she would
be receiving her settlement. In this letter it was much easier to be upfront about the
content of the letter due to the positive nature of the information within. This was a
very useful exercise due to the fact that it shows how correspondence with the
same person can change drastically due to the nature of the information that is
being presented.
Chapter 2 Exercise 3
This exercise was a good example of how the same information can be framed in a
different way depending on what the audience is, the one flyer addressed to parents
and the other addressed to employers. In this exercise I believe that the focus is not
so much on the writing that I did, but rather on the observation of the different
writing styles used within the flyers and how we should consider all of these things
when taking into account the tone, wording, and direction of the writing that we, as
a class, do.
Technical Report
The purpose of this report was to collaborate on a technical document. With the
backstory of our company we felt like the easiest thing to provide a technical report

for was safety reforms. We decided to implement formatting and organization

similar to the examples in the textbook. There werent any conflict of great
consequence when compiling this report, the team seemed to work very well
together. We were also able to use class time to compile the information that we
created within the technical report into a prezi to be presented during class time.
Correspondence Project
The correspondence project was a project used to formulate a proposal that would
be sent to another team and then to also answer a proposal. The audience for this
assignment was a business to business communication. With that in mind, the
communication should be professional, all while keeping in mind what should and
should not be shared. I believe that the main purpose of this exercise was to be able
to communicate effectively in a business format all while knowing the limitations of
communication outside of the business that you are in.
Proposal
The purpose of this exercise was to become familiar with the formatting and
structure of a proposal in a business setting, as well as strengthening the
collaboration between group members. After receiving the assignment the group
looked at a number of proposals and used theses as a guideline for what to do in
our own proposal. We were able to leverage online collaboration tools so that we
could distribute the workload out amongst all of us and complete the task. Using the
information that we had from the previous group work that we had done made this
exercise much easier after we were able to familiarize ourselves with the formatting
used in a business proposal.
Chapter 3 Exercise 2
This audience for this particular exercise is all people within the computer science
major. I do not think that this holds much bearing on the exercise itself other than
the fact that it shows that the tone of the writing should be geared towards a peer. I
believe the most important aspect of this exercise is to be able to look at the
company and be able to make, and voice, an educated opinion on whether or not
the company seems ethical. I feel like my writing encompassed both of those
things. However, if I had it to do over again I would write more about the ways in
which the company may not be as ethical as is listed.
Chapter 9 Exercise 2
The audience as listed within the prompt on this exercise is all other students in my
class. This audience is representative of a peer audience. I believe that the purpose
of this exercise is not only to think about profession communication with peers but
also to be able to take complex information and synthesize it into a form that can be
easily understood. I was able to accomplish both of these by keeping a professional
tone while being direct in answering the questions that were prompted in the
exercise. This exercise would seem to be representative of a good portion of
communication in a business sense as it pertains to communicating with peers.
Chapter 4 Exercise 3

The purpose of this exercise is to be able to look at communication and know when
it is inappropriate for the task. The audience in this exercise would technically be
the residence of the apartments in the exercise. Taking this into consideration it
would mean that the audience is a customer of yours. This means that the tone of
the information should be both professional and tactful especially since the purpose
of the communication is to bring up problems. There were a number of things that
could have been changed within this memo but I think that I was able to hit the key
things.
Chapter 10 Exercise 1
The purpose of this exercise is to explain things to someone who may not be
familiar with the same concept as you and to do this in a way that is
understandable. The audience in this exercise is a group of people that may not
have the same knowledge as the author. With this in mind there has to be special
care taken to not make assumptions within the instructions. There is also the need
to do this as succinctly as possible to keep the attention of the reader throughout
the entire command.
Instructional Memo
The instructional memo also has many of the characteristics of the previous
exercise except for the fact that it presents the information in a business setting. In
this sense you can assume a little bit more about the knowledge of the person
reading the instructions due to the fact that they have some sort of common
training, hopefully.
Chapter 5 Exercise 3
This exercise seems to be a synthesis of a number of techniques used throughout
the course. It is an instructional document as well as a technical document,
therefore the audience is both a customer and someone who may not have an
intimate knowledge of the product. The tone must therefore be professional and
descriptive. This exercise also shows the importance of organization within a
document as well because the only real task in this exercise is to rearrange the
information so that it becomes something that is useful to the customer.
Research Infographic
The purpose of this exercise was to be able to take information and use it in a way
that is helpful to our business and I feel like we were able to use infographic tools to
do that in an attractive and effective way. During the time of the research
infographic our entire team was not present for the entirety of its creation, however
we were able to do research with the team members that were available and keep
the other team members updated on the progress of the infographic along with
areas in which they would be able to contribute to the assignment. The most
difficult part of this was being able to come up with an idea for what to present
within this infographic. However, I am glad that we did not rush into anything
because I am very pleased with what we were able to accomplish by holding of
starting the assignment and doing research on the subject.

Illustration Design
This illustration design assignment was able to be pulled from the previous safety
reform document that we collaborated on earlier in the semester.