Diego Palacios

ENGL4183

05/09/2016
Final Assessment
Final Assessment

This final assessment is my final reflection on the different projects worked on

over the entirety of the semester and class time. My intention for taking the class
was to further expand my knowledge technical writing, which is not just knowing
how to write as the name would suggest, as it also requires one to be able to edit
and proofread proficiently in order to improve the quality of ones work. Having
taking many technical writing classes, as well as performing many lab reports for
my computer science major, I was interested in learn beyond simply writing.
Knowing the mistakes in my own writing, I wanted to be sure I could spot and
correct any others. With the variety in the projects performed, as well as the use of
peer review, I believe I have achieved this.
The first project, project A, was to choose from two chapters for the Passport
of Success eBook. I chose ChapterIIA, although the chapters were fairly similar in
context. First, we edited six pages to start then we worked on the rest of the
chapter as our first project. The paper did not contain any graphics so all of the
edits done were for grammatical errors and formatting issues and there were many
of both in this particular project. Before starting the paper however, it was
important to know the audience and purpose of the edits, which were discussed in
the planning memo before making the paper in order to get us to think before
acting. This particular chapters were from an eBook that dealt with informing
teachers and other faculty members about the important of a new type education
program, Prospect for Success. From this, the audience and the purpose is clear:
Professors/faculty and to inform them. The chapters were made in Microsoft Word
which I was already familiar with so it was to make changes to the document. I also
chose to make the correction in the document but add a detailed comments of what
was previously there to make it obvious to the author which changes were made
and why. Despite being written by faculty, the chapters felt rushed and roughly
edited with lack of proper proofreading or of it even being finished. This was evident
by the many awkward indentations, lists splits, and excessive adjectives. I chose to
work on both grammatical and formatting issues as once, choosing not to move
away from a page until I deemed all work was finished for it as I did not want to lose
momentum while working on what particular section. There were not many
grammatical errors in the chapter itself, but it was the excessive use of

Diego Palacios
ENGL4183

05/09/2016
Final Assessment

adjectives/adverbs that was rather off-putting so many were noted down or omitted.
Many of the titles for a section were also inconsistently organized so I chose to add
different emphasis to the different titles so readers could follow through the
transitions between sections easier, something which I chose to do in the projects
later on. Working with another classmate, as part of the peer review, also helped to
add more edits which I had previously overlooked as well as forming discussions on
what we agreed or disagreed to be correct formatting. Overall, project A was my
first attempt at editing on a professional level and there were still many things to
learn as I attempted to circumvent what I perceived to be flaws in the writing. It was
an appropriately simpler document to edit, focusing mainly on formatting for the
paragraphs, as well as the flow of the document through fixing its many titles. I
worked on the project with both the computer at the classroom and my own
personal laptop, which both contain different versions of Word. I suspect that many
formatting errors came from switching between the two, which prompted me to
work on my laptop for the rest of the class, whenever possible. The feedback given
by the professor on the final draft also helped to shed some light on mistakes in the
documents I may have overlooked, specifically switching numbers into a written
format, a mistake which I would overlooked a few more times in the next projects.
Repetition and parallelism in lists were also two things I overlooked, as one lists had
the same question repeated four times, for each option, so it was ultimately moved
to the sentence before the list. Another list had varying options that did not flow
very well and it was jarring when trying to read so it was implemented in the revised
version of the final draft.
The second project, project B, was a continuation of the last project, focusing
on similar editing practices, as well as being able to choose a longer and more indepth chapter of the Passport for Success eBook or student-made usability reports.
Being familiar with the eBook chapters, I chose to focus my project B work on that,
although in retrospect, it may have been more beneficial to have chosen to work in
a different of document as it is never good to avoid a challenge when arisen and
simply play in ones comfort zone. Regardless, this chapter had some different
issues to fix and graphics to deal with so it was a harder document to tackle. The
document used Word once again but this time I chose to work on one computer, my
laptop, to avoid any possible formatting issues as in my last project. Although this

Diego Palacios
ENGL4183

05/09/2016
Final Assessment

chapter contained fewer overall grammatical issues and typos, it came with a whole
new host of errors and being longer made it so the inconsistency issues that
plagued the last chapter were harder to catch. The font in different areas of the
paper were different sizes so I opted to make the switch to font size 11 in the main
paragraph and all other applicable areas. The color of the main body of text was
also grey in some areas and black in order, so it was normalized to black. The
paragraphs were also inconsistent in their formatting as some paragraphs started
with a single indentation while others did not. The lists options throughout the
document were also not aligned properly and varied wildly through the pages so it
took some time to align them evenly. Lastly, the spacing of the sentences were
uneven so it was made to be the same throughout. Once again, project B contained
similar issues as the previous chapter edited in project A, but there was a noticeable
improvement in the writing. With the help of another classmate, it was easier to
tackle the entirety of this longer chapter and consolidating the changes made, as
well as giving each other different advices on the work performed as it can be easy
to get accustomed to ones own style of writing and overlook small mistakes. The
professor also provided good feedback for the project, mainly on editing references
in APA style, as it was something I had no proper knowledge of at the time of editing
the document. I also neglected to switch numbers into a written format once more.
The third chapter, project C, was a good change of pace from the previous
two projects as it introduced new material to choose from which heavily
incorporated graphics and other visual aids which made formatting a bit trickier to
deal with and manage. The document edited was an administrative report for some
community engagement activities performed over three years and how they
impacted the community. It was split into two parts and I chose to do the second
part as it seemed to be more graphic heavy which could prove useful to get familiar
with. It also was composed on three columns of text instead of a single big one as
many documents tend to be which led to many more complications and obstacles to
overcome as editing was being performed. The audience was also much more
diverse as it was aimed to all the communities in and around UNCC so the wording
used changes significantly, as well as the tone being more relax and casual. The
original document was a PDF file but I chose to format it to a Word document as I
was more accustomed to working with word rather than acrobat. Once again, in

Diego Palacios
ENGL4183

05/09/2016
Final Assessment

retrospect, it would have been far more important for me to experiment with
different tools and applications rather than falling into patterns already know and
comfort zones. Regardless, there was a lot to learn for this new material which I had
not previously tackled. The three column design proved to be difficult to work it as
changes to the sizes of the graphics were made to avoid many excessive amounts
of white space throughout the report. Grammatical errors and typos were far apart
and few, however many of the sentences in the different columns were oddly
separated as the columns used a justified paragraph alignment which consequently
made those sentences very spaced out and visually jarring. It was too time
consuming to fix every single one but the most visible ones were fixed accordingly
by either manually removing extra spaces or rearranging sentences to fit better.
Lastly, with the help of a classmate, I noticed that all of the graphics and visuals in
the document had no source and some were referenced in the text but without
sources or figure numbering, it made those references useless so many comments
were made addressing this specific situation to the authors. Ultimately, project C
had a heavy focus on formatting and graphics, the later which had been fairly
absent from previous projects and provided a good exercise in this type of editing.
With the three column design, it was rather difficult to properly format all the
graphics, as some even felt oddly places and could be done without them or smaller
pictures. This particular project had more draft than the rest, as the document
worked on suffered an error when being transferred from one computer to another,
causing some crucial formatting issues that recurring another draft to be made to
correct said issues. It could have been avoided by simply using Acrobat to comment
on the original PDF file but the work was still performed. The different audience and
tone helped to shape the type of language I prefer to use when removing any words
or sentences that I felt were erroneous. The professor feedback helped me to decide
a particular part of the edits I chose not to touch which were author notes. There
were many throughout the report but I was unsure on what to do with them. I was
instructed to omit then or mark them as authors notes for the user to see. In the
end, I chose to remove them all together as they felt as useless information to the
user.
The fourth and last project, project D, was perhaps the most unique of all of
the projects as the professor allowed students to choose what type of document we

Diego Palacios
ENGL4183

05/09/2016
Final Assessment

wanted to proofread and provide comments to their original authors. However, this
made it difficult to peer review with others and thus, it was not required but highly
encouraged nevertheless. I chose to edit two lab guides from a previous computer
science class I had taken a few semesters ago. The lab guides provided detail
instructions on how to complete various important tasks to know for completing
other objectives later down the road. However, other students and I complained
that the lab guide were badly formatted and flowed very unevenly, although the
information was complete. As I have taken the class myself before, I know the
audience and their gripes with the guides so I felt that I was perfectly qualified to
modify this documents based on my own experience with them. These lab guides
did not contain graphics but involved different emphasis to the font such as
different sizes, font style, italics, bolded and many others. They were used to make
certain steps clearer but it was rather inconsistent. My main focus was to make the
lab guides consistent throughout but without compromising the actual information
provided. This required taking many of the instructions and manually changing their
font or emphasis to match with a specific action for the entirety of the guide in the
hopes that recognizing the change in font would help the reader immediately
understand the type of action that had to be taken. In addition, a small note or
disclaimer was added to the top of the lab guide that indicated the action that was
to be taken depending on the style of font that was used. Another addition made
from previous projects and peer review was to add proper captions to the figures in
the lab guide. Although there were no graphics, there were some figures in the form
of textboxes with important information and tables with data needed to be input by
the readers, so it was imperative that the reader knew where to look to find that
information and the captions helped in this regard. Being a guide, it included many
steps in the form of lists which many had to be formatted properly using the rulers
provided by Microsoft Word in order to be aesthetically pleasing and easier to flow.
Lastly, when the two lab guide were combined into one document, I realized they
had different margins so those had be changed to match, as well as manually
spacing out many of the paragraphs to avoid splitting any information or
instructions. Overall, project D was a culmination of the different projects performed
and gave me a chance to implement what I had learn into a document of my
choosing. There was no feedback for this particular project however.

Diego Palacios
ENGL4183

05/09/2016
Final Assessment

All four projects had distinct rules and goals to them but after each
subsequent one, I felt more prepared to tackle the next one. The feedback from
peers during the projects and the professor afterwards gave me chances to reflect
on the work that I had accomplished and what I had overlooked, whether big or
small. Although the class provided the freedom to choose the application or
program we wanted to use, I wish I would have chosen to work with Acrobat on PDF
files as to be better prepared and experienced for the different formats used in
working environments. Still, I feel that I was able to successfully tackle many
different scenarios that required different considerations from audience to purpose
and time constraints that can affect your writing and editing considerably. These
assignments gave me a new appreciation for self-improvement and reflection as
there are many mistakes which I was surprised to find in reports made by
professionals and if they commit simple mistakes, there is no doubt I am doing the
same. I hope to take what I have learned all semester long and apply it in all terms
of my writing and that I can become more proactive in interacting with new formats
and technologies.