Document Development Exposition: Workplace Correspondence

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

Planning
I knew I wanted to write about the same thing I wrote about in the White Paper, so the planning was
easy. I just had to figure out how I would phrase the issue I talked about there into a problem that
had an actionable solution. I decided here to talk about funding mainly as the solution.

First Draft (for peer editing)

Once I had the memo topic down, the email followed quickly and I wrote it as I would’ve any other
email. I did have to figure out who I was writing to and who I was in this scenario, so I did a bit of
research and decided to write to the head of conservation for the UN. Additionally, I decided to play
the part of a data analyst for the UN.

I looked at the exemplars given to us in class and decided to base a lot of my formatting on that. Just
like that document did, I decided to add color to the headers to make them stand out a bit. Other
than that, I essentially just rehashed what I wrote in the white paper in a more condensed form,
adding recommendations for more funding at the very end of the document.

Second Draft (for your packet)

I did not have the time to finish the conclusion and recommendations section of my first draft due to
my job, so those were the main pieces of feedback I got from my peer reviews. I believe I was also
critiqued on not providing enough information about the applications of these solutions, so I tried to
make sure my summary felt more motivated.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

For my email, I mainly just added a subject line and a signature, the former of which I would have
done anyway. I did completely forget to put a signature though, and I think it looks much better with
one.

For my memo, I was informed that color is not appropriate in memos, so I changed everything to
black and I think it looks more professional. I was also told that my actions were not actionable
enough, which I definitely agree with, so I decided to change my recommendations completely to
focus on setting up a meeting with researchers in the field. From that, I do think I understand the
fundamentals of a memo better now, as its main focus is on getting information out and a
 Document Development Exposition: Workplace Correspondence

response/action back as quickly as possible.