Document Development Exposition: Email

ENGL 2116 | Spring 2018

Explain in detail your document’s development from planning to finish, describing your
challenges, how you overcame them, and what you learned.

Planning
For this assignment I had to pretend to be a representative of a company of my choice and
request something from another company or organization. Since my topic is Meteorites my
choices where a little bit limited. I decided that the best organization to pretend to write for
would be SpaceX. I chose them because they have a wealth of information about themselves
on their website and have a new project that could tie in with a project NASA is doing. The
request is for NASA to use the new BFR launch platform that SpaceX is developing to send
their asteroid capture system to space. This seemed like it would be the best thing to write
about because I could find plenty of information about the topic and I thought that this is
probably a talk that is already happening in reality.

First Draft
The first hurtle in the first draft was making the header. I am not a very good graphic designer and I
could not find a way to elegantly display the header just using Microsoft Word. I decided to break
out a copy of Photoshop I had from the first college I attended and use that to create the heading.
Using inspiration from Google images I feel like I made a pretty good header. The next part I
struggled with was the tone. These two companies are probably in contact a lot and have formalities
that I’m not sure how to articulate. In the first draft I thought the tone was very off and it read like
the only knowledge I had of the two projects was a brief reading of Wikipedia. I had to go back and
re-read a lot of the information I had read before so that I could be satisfied I was using the proper
terms as well as seeming knowledgeable of the subject in the letter.

Second Draft
I began working on the second draft after receiving peer revisions. The part that I struggled with the
most when writing the second draft was coming up with the questions as well as incorporating them.
Originally, I had the questions and the “Request Action” portion as two separate sub-headings. I
didn’t like the way this looked and thought that the flow was wrong. For the draft I would submit to
canvas I attempted to combine both of those under one sub-heading. I think that this turned out a
lot better than what I had for the rough draft. I also struggled with the portion of the letter where I
am supposed to close with a goodwill statement. It took me a very long time to find a short phrase
that did not sound unprofessional. Most of the phrases I tried sounded too familiar and not like
something that one company would send to another. I still do not think that the wording is perfect,
but it does read much more professional than most of my drafts.

Final Draft
 Document Development Exposition: Email
ENGL 2116 | Spring 2018

Writing the final paper for this assignment was easier than most. When I originally submitted the
assignment to Canvas I accidentally included two of my rough drafts instead of the one after peer
edits. This meant that a lot of the comments provided by the instructor I had already changed.
However, I had not included that date and address at the top of the letter and still needed to add
that. Reading back over my letter I was still not satisfied in the tone. It felt very casual and was not
believable as a real letter between these two organizations. For my final draft going into the
portfolio I still am not satisfied with the tone, but I think that I am much closer than I was in my first
draft.