Document Development Exposition: Correspondence

ENGL 2116

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

Planning
For the correspondence letter I wanted the subject to be about new program ideas that could help
reduce the environmental effects of global warming on both the arctic and Antarctica. For this I found
2 people, Anna Dalton Director of Grants and Funding for the Alaskan Conservation Foundation, and
Michael Barber Executive Director of the Alaskan Conservation Foundation (ACF). I figured that one
would be able to help me start a new campaign within the ACF and the other could help me setup a
sister foundation with a focus on Antarctica. When planning this, much like the white paper, I used a
prep doc for both the letter and email that helped remind me of the audience and style I was going
for. Additionally, the letterhead I created was done in InDesign as I had never used that program
before and wanted experience.

First Draft (for peer editing)

The peer editing process for this assignment was rushed as we didn’t have time for many people to
have both papers reviewed. As such I was only able to get my letter reviewed. The peer review that
was given to me was overly positive and provided nothing for me to change with the exception of a
few grammatical errors.

Second Draft (for your packet)

Like I said prior this version was for the most part unchanged from my peer review version. I finished
writing some of the thoughts I had as well as reformatted the questions to be more thought provoking
and less googleable.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

For the portfolio I made all of the changes recommended except one. For the email I added headings,
added a greeting before jumping into the buffer and explained my solution better and in more detail. I
also decided to delete the standard “I look forward to…” statement as it was bland. For the letter I
separated out information in the letter head as well as changed the font of the letter head, so it was
visually different. In the letter I did decide to keep the outline around the letterhead as I feel it was a
design choice that attracted the readers eye to the company name but not so much that it distracted
from the document.