Chapters 14 & 15

Chapter 14 (Revising Your Draft)
Chapter 14 begins by describing 3 activities for revising your draft.

• Identify improvements
• Decide which improvements to make
• Make the selected changes

Reviewing your draft yourself and having others review your draft are two possible ways of identifying the desired improvements for your draft. The more difficult yet very productive method is having someone else review your work. I have had coworkers review emails and memos prior to completing the final draft. This had saved me a lot of extra effort. In addition the boss is very pleased when your writing is complete with little or no input from him.

Another important thing to remember is how you give and receive criticism. You must develop a good working relationship with your coworkers so that when you review their work criticism will be well received. Further, when giving suggestions try to phrase them from the point of view of the intended readers. When receiving criticism try to be open and focus on listening to the reviewers point of view.

Many of the strategies in this chapter are employed at my place of work.

Chapter 15 (Testing Drafts for Usability and Persuasiveness)

Testing your drafts for usability and persuasiveness is essential when creating work instructions or similar documents. The objectives of testing are generally to determine how to improve the draft and to determine if the communication is adequate. When seeking test readers try to get individuals that represent your target readers. This will help ensure accurate results.

As a product designer I have had opportunity to write several installation instructions. It was always interesting to see people use them for the first time. Often times I found that the test readers had very good questions that led to some key revisions that added clarity to the instructions.