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DATE: 23 September, 2021 

TO: Debbie Oesch-Minor 

FROM: Dana Reed

SUBJECT: Using the Core Concepts of Bold Headings, Positive Language, and Audience Analysis In W231 Writing Correspondences.

 

Throughout Project 1 for class W231, I have gained insight from our textbook, “Business and Administrative Communication'' by Kitty Locker. I will be going through some of my correspondences and visual to show how Locker concepts influenced each writing and use them as evidence for my mastery of W231 writing strategies. 

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Main Points of the Following Memo

• The steps of my personal writing process

• The use of bold headings in the persuasive correspondence to aid in my writing process

• The importance of positive language in the negative correspondence

• The use of audience analysis in deciding reader benefits for my visual presentation

 

My Writing Process

With our first assignment of writing the persuasive correspondence, I gained insight into my own writing process and if professional writing would come naturally to me. Typically, the ideas for writing come somewhat easily to me but the challenging part is organizing that information into solid paragraphs. At the beginning of most papers, my writing doesn’t make sense. I typically have to get all my ideas out of my head first without trying to polish and organize everything. Afterward I go through and put ideas together to form full paragraphs. 

 

Writing the Persuasive Correspondence

One strategy that I learned while writing the persuasive correspondence is the use of bold headings and lists to separate sections of writing. However, I did not learn this concept until after my first draft which required a lot of revision. 

 

Learning the Importance of Headings 

In the first draft of the persuasive correspondence, I did not include any bold headings or lists. After looking through the first peer reviews of the persuasive correspondence, I got to understand their importance and began to add them. I learned that it increased the readability of the correspondence and helped highlight the most important points of writing. This idea is reaffirmed in Locker’s “you can also emphasize material by presenting it in a vertical list, by using informative headings, and by providing details (Locker, 2013, p. 386). The bold headings are very important and the audience should be able to get the basic information they need by skimming and reading headings.  

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Additionally, I did not expect to find this Locker strategy so useful in my basic writing process. Since I had already spent more time on the organization of papers, the use of clear headings made it easier to group ideas together from the start. 

 

Before Revision: Persuasive Correspondence: 

“Our team will invest over 200 hours of exploration during a 10 week period into a topic you pick. We will analyze current industry trends and best practices to shape our recommendations. To further individualize the research to you, we will design a local study with 50+ respondents, where we will gather more information and the most current concerns of your target audience.”

 

After Revision: Persuasive Correspondence : 

The paragraph explaining what is included in the report was changed to a bulleted list following a bold heading and is shown below. It gave the client, MieYoung Reed, a quick overview of the final product of this report process. 

What the Recommendation Report Includes

Every semester IUPUI students work with local organizations by writing detailed recommendation reports for them. Some of the following services the report will provide include: 

• 200 hours of exploration over a 10 week period

• Analyzing current industry trends and best practices

• Results from a local study designed specifically to the topic you chose

• 100 hours of research condensed into a 4-page report

 

Writing the Negative Correspondence 

The negative correspondence ended up being my favorite assignment of writing project 1. Typically, getting right to the point, especially with bad news, is something I tend to avoid. I never want to sound harsh or offend who I am writing to. However, in the negative correspondence, I learned to be more direct while also protecting my audience’s ego. 

 

The Importance of You-attitude 

One strategy of you-attitude is avoiding the use of the word “you” in a negative situation. Locker suggests “When you report bad news or limitations, use a noun for a group of which your audience is a part instead of you” (Locker, 2013, p. 61). It is important to be impersonal as to not assign blame on anybody and to protect your audience’s ego. 

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 I demonstrated this skill during the negative correspondence assignment in the first line of my message. I started by stating “I am here to inform you that after careful consideration the JW Marriott has not been chosen as a finalist for the IUPUI Recommendation Report”. Instead of naming my client specifically and the problem she proposed, I chose to name the business she works for instead, which is the JW Marriott. While I wanted my gratitude to feel personal to the client, I needed to create somewhat of a barrier between the bad news and my audience.

 

Creating the Visual Presentation

In order to create an informative and captivating visual you need to understand all aspects of the project and audience. Locker confirms as a part of the planning process “Analyzing the problem, defining your purposes, and analyzing the audience” (Locker, 2013, p. 121). By understanding who is being presented to, you get to know what they may find most beneficial to them. 

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This part of the planning process influenced what benefits I chose for the audience. The scope of the project was already based on connecting with IUPUI students. However, with the client being the JW Marriott, it made the project more closely related to the hospitality industry. The benefits of working with my client needed to impact my audience, even if the project topic did not specifically apply to them.

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 I solved this by making the benefits broad enough to include any person who may apply for a job in the future. One benefit was to “Gain insight on the recruitment process that employers go through”. As most of my audience is studying to eventually move into a specific professional field. Therefore, they would benefit from working with a professional who is extremely knowledgeable about the general hiring processes.