Reviewing Documents and Websites
Printed Page 342-345
Reviewing Documents and Websites
Reviewing a document or website is the process of studying and changing a draft to make it easier to use. Reviewing a document consists of three tasks: revising, editing, and proofreading. In carrying out these tasks, you will likely work from larger issues to smaller issues. You will first review the document as a whole (for scope, organization, and development), saving the smaller issues (such as sentence-level concerns) for later. That way, you don’t waste time on awkward paragraphs or sentences that you might eventually throw out.
Read more about audience and purpose in Ch. 5.
Revising is the process of looking again at your draft to see if your initial assumptions about your audience, purpose, and subject still pertain, and then making any necessary changes. These changes can range from minor, such as adding one or two minor topics, to major, such as adding whole new sections and deleting others.
Read more about revising in Ch. 3.
For example, imagine you are revising a set of instructions to help new sales associates at your company understand how to return unsold merchandise to the supplier for credit. Since you started working on the instructions last month, your company has instituted a new policy: sales associates must write statements to management analyzing the costs and benefits of returning the unsold merchandise versus discounting it heavily and trying to sell it. Now you need to do some additional research to be sure you understand the new policy, gather or create some examples of the kinds of statements sales associates will be expected to submit, write new instructions, and integrate them into your draft. You thought you were almost done, but you aren’t. It happens.
Having revised the draft, you think it is in good shape. It meets the needs of its readers, it fulfills your purpose or purposes, and it covers the subject effectively, presenting the right information. Now it’s time for editing: going a little deeper into the draft.
Editing the Draft
After you finish your draft, look through it to make sure the writing is clear and effective. Start with the big picture by answering these four questions:
- Is the design effective? Documents and sites should look professional and attractive, and they should be easy to navigate. Will your readers find it easy to locate the information they want? Read more on design in Chapter 11.
- Does your draft meet your readers’ expectations? If, for instance, the readers of a report expect a transmittal letter, they might be distracted if they don’t see one. Check to make sure that your draft includes the information they expect and looks the way they expect. Be especially careful if your document or site will be used by people from other cultures, who might have different expectations. Read more on writing for multicultural readers in Chapter 5.
- Is your draft honest, and does it adhere to appropriate legal standards? Have you presented your information honestly, without being misleading and without omitting information that might counter your argument? Have you adhered to appropriate legal standards of intellectual property, such as copyright law? Read more on ethical and legal issues in Chapter 2.
- Do you come across as reliable, honest, and helpful? Check to see that your persona is fully professional: modest, understated, and cooperative. Read more on persona in Chapter 8.
Next, answer these four questions related to the organization and development of the draft:
- Have you left out anything in turning your outline into a draft? Check your outline to see that all the topics are included in the document itself. Or switch to the outline view in your word processor so that you can focus on the headings. Is anything missing? Read more on the outline view in Chapter 3.
- Is the organization logical? Your draft is likely to reflect several different organizational patterns. For instance, the overall pattern might be chronological. Within that pattern, sections might be organized from more important to less important. Looking at the headings in the outline view, can you see the patterns you used, and do those patterns seem to work well? Read more on organizational patterns in Chapter 7.
- Is the emphasis appropriate throughout the draft? If a major point is treated only briefly, mark it for possible expansion. If a minor topic is treated at great length, mark it for possible condensing.
- Are your arguments well developed? Have you presented your claims clearly and emphatically? Have you done sufficient and appropriate research to gather the right evidence to support your claims effectively? Is your reasoning valid and persuasive? Read more on conducting research, see Chapter 6. For more on using evidence effectively in Chapter 8.
Finally, answer these four questions related to the verbal and visual elements of the draft:
- Are all the elements presented consistently? Check to see that parallel items are presented consistently. For example, are all your headings on the same level structured the same way (for example, as noun phrases or as gerunds, ending in -ing)? And check for grammatical parallelism, particularly in lists, but also in traditional sentences. Read more on parallelism in Chapter 10.
- Are your paragraphs well developed? Does each paragraph begin with a clear topic sentence that previews or summarizes the main point? Have you included appropriate and sufficient support to validate your claims? Read more on paragraph development in Chapter 9.
- Are your sentences clear and correct? Review the draft to make sure each sentence is easy to understand, is grammatically correct, and is structured to emphasize the appropriate information. Read more on writing effective sentences in Chapter 10.
- Have you used graphics appropriately? Do you see more opportunities to translate verbal information into graphics to make your communication easier to understand and more emphatic? Have you chosen the proper types of graphics, created effective ones, and linked them to your text? Read more on graphics in Chapter 12.
Editing your draft thoroughly requires a lot of work. Naturally, you hope that once you’re done editing, you will never need to go back and retrieve that earlier draft. But experienced writers know that things don’t always go that smoothly. Half the time, when you throw out a sentence, paragraph, or section that you absolutely know you will never need again, you soon realize you need it again. For this reason, it’s smart to use your word processor’s change-tracking function and archive all the drafts of everything you write. The easiest way to do this is to use a version number at the end of the file name. For example, the first draft of a Lab Renovation proposal is LabRenPropV1. When it comes time to edit that draft, open that file and immediately rename it LabRenPropV2.
Proofreading is the long, slow process of reading through your draft one last time to make sure you have written what you intended to write. You are looking for minor problems caused by carelessness or haste. For instance, have you written filename on one page and file name on another? Have you been consistent in expressing quantities as numerals or as words? Have you been consistent in punctuating citations in your list of works cited? Although your software can help you with some of these chores, it isn’t sophisticated enough to do it all. You need time—and willpower.
Look particularly for problems in word endings. For instance, a phrase such as “we studying the records from the last quarter” is a careless error left over from an earlier draft of the sentence. Change it to “we studied the records from the last quarter.” Also look for missing and repeated words: “We studied the from the last quarter”; “We studied the the records from the last quarter.”
How do you reduce your chances of missing these slips? Read the draft slowly, out loud, listening to what you have written and marking things that look wrong. After you fix those problems, go through the draft one more time, one line at a time, looking for more problems. Some instructors suggest reading the document backward—last page first, last line first, right to left—so you can focus on the individual words. If you can stand doing it, do it. You might also consider mixing up the pages of your document (ensuring that you’ve numbered them first) and reading them out of sequence so that you can focus on words and sentences without getting lost in the argument’s flow.