Memorandum

To: Professor Brian Malone

From: Khalid Almutairi
Date: September 5, 2019
Subject: Technical Writing Project 1
______________________________________________________________________________

This memorandum contains the analysis of technical prose style of my previous writing. I reviewed
my class assignment of Lean Six Sigma titled as “1.5 Shift and Drift Theory”. My findings
described below enlighten the weak points of my prose style. I checked my writing for being
concise, precise, direct and for noticeable errors.

1) Be Concise
To be concise is to be brief and comprehensive in every sentence of the writing. I looked for lard,
redundant phrases, dead phrases, and unnecessary modifiers while analyzing my writing.

a) Lard: In my assignment, I found the that I add unnecessary words, they do not add value
to my writing. For example:
i) “Six Sigma is a methodology that was developed by Motorola in an attempt to reduce
defects to such a low value that they virtually become non-existent.”
ii) “That’s why nowadays there are actually two values that one could look at while
assigning a sigma value to a process.”
To eliminate lard, I can use words with clear meanings.

b) Redundant Words/Phrases: I found several redundant words throughout my assignment,

many of them being modifiers. I found one example where I used two redundant words in
the same sentence.
“The main purpose of 1.5 sigma shift was to enhance the already existing performance
capability of lean systems by incorporating the long-term deviation effects at the present
time.”
 Khalid Project 1 2

In the sentence above, I used “already” before existing, as well as “present time”, both of these are
redundant words.

c) Dead Phrases: I observed another common mistake in writing dead phrases in my

assignment. There is no real value to them, except for taking up spaces. I used them to
simply increase the word count of the assignment.
“As it is stated earlier, 1.5 sigma shift occurs in long term calculations, with the mean
deviation occurring over time.”
If I remove the underlined phrase from the above sentence, the meaning wouldn’t change at all.
Therefore, it is a dead phrase.

d) Unnecessary Modifiers: I checked my two writing samples and observed that I make
mistake of using the unnecessary modifiers repeatedly throughout the paper. I mostly tend
to use the words “actually” and “very” in the sentences.
“The sigma shift is actually a natural variation of the equipment over the period of more
than ten years. This is very important to consider the effect of sigma shift in calculations
of sigma level.”
If I remove this word from this sentence, the meaning of the sentence would not change. Using the
word “actually” did not enhance the descriptiveness of the sentence.

2) Be Precise
Being precise means accurate and exact. The aim of being precise is to adapt our writing according
to the understanding level of the intended reader. In my opinion, my writing is pretty precise
although I have trouble in being concise.
a) Audience level of expertise: It’s important to know how to write precisely based on the
level of expertise that our reader will be able to comprehend. For my assignment, my
professor who is also a Six-Sigma green belt was the intended audience as well as the
students of the same domain. He has a higher level of expertise than me and the students
have same level of knowledge as me. Therefore, my writing was precise with respect to
the intended audience.
Khalid Project 1 3

“It is important to notice that 1.5 is a value that Motorola discovered as base on their own empirical
research, but it doesn’t have to apply to all processes. Qualified professionals can use data available
about a specific process and assign a different sigma value to the shift between short-term and
long-term expectations that is adequate for the situation in question. This makes Six Sigma more
flexible and allows it to adapt to all kinds of organizations.”

b) Consistency: I struggled to remain consistent when referring to importance of sigma shift

throughout my assignment.
“The purpose of this technique is to enhance process capability of already existing process
in industries.”
“This tool helps in determining the sigma level of the organization.”
In the above examples, I am referring my 1.5 sigma shift as a technique and tool. Although both
terminologies could be used but these should be consistent throughout the writing.

3) Be Direct:
Being direct is to be straightforward and to the point in the writing by using active verbs and active
voice. It also includes the usage of the stress position and topic position is the writing.

a) Lazy vs Active Verbs: Many verbs that I used in the writing were generic and lazy. There
were situations where I could have used more specific verbs to the context.
“The recorded data of variations can be checked by using the 3-sigma methodology.”
When read aloud, this entire sentence sounds dull due to the lazy verb choices. Instead of
“checked”, “examined” should be used.

b) Active vs Passive Voice: The active voice is preferred in writing, but it is appropriate to
use passive voice for technical or scientific papers. Since my writing was an assignment,
therefore it had more active voice.
I conducted the “zombie test” in my head while reading through my paper. There were little to no
areas where I could add on “by zombies” at the end of a sentence and still have it make senses.

c) Topic Sentences: The topic sentences provide context to the paragraph or fragment usually
followed by them. It was problematic for me to compose clear topic sentences to start some
of my paragraphs. While reading, the reader could not guess the context of that fragment.
 Khalid Project 1 4

“Six Sigma is a methodology that was developed by Motorola to reduce defects to such a
low value that they virtually become non-existent. When the company first started
evaluating and optimizing processes, they soon realized that process deteriorate or shift in
performance over longer periods of time. That’s why short-term data can’t really be
considered fully accurate or fully predictive for the way the process will work in the long-
term. There are just too many factors that subtly change with time that are impossible to
control or monitor correctly.”
This was the opening sentence of sigma shift and drift paragraph of my assignment. It does not
give the context of the writing to the reader. This paragraph should be started by this line: “1.5
sigma drift is a natural process variation or shift in performance over long period of time.”

4) Noticeable Errors
I found some noticeable errors while I was reviewing my writing. I did not proofread my
assignment carefully, that is why I found few mistakes due to which the sentence structure was not
exact. Most of these errors consisted of misuse of comma, and that is why my sentence were not
making any sense. I often check the spellings in my writing as well as the spelling check in the
MS Word also helps a lot. So, I think I should focus on proof reading my writing before
submission.

Conclusion
After carefully reviewing my writing, I noticed the mistakes I made and how to reduce those
mistakes for an effective writing. I noticed that my precision is good, but I have to improve my
writing for being concise and being direct. Sometimes I used filler words and dead phrases to meet
page requirements which ended up making my writing more confusing in the long run. By taking
an in-depth look at my writing prose, I found the potential aspects to make my writing great and
credible.