Technical Blog

This week revisit back to the textbook deals with revising and testing your drafts for usability and persuasiveness. While it is difficult to recognize problems with your own piece of writing, there are guidelines provided that will help overcome the obstacles and allow the writer to see where the draft need improvement. The guidelines I found most useful were seeing from the perspective of your audience take a break between writing and reading the draft to catch what you meant to say and put it on paper. In the real world, any given tasks are expected to be professionally done and delivered in a timely manner. If the work is late, it could be considered as worthless. Time management is huge when it comes revising your work. Some suggestions the book game are to make the most significant revisions first and ask for an outside opinion (a reviewer).

The next step after revising your draft is to test it for usability and persuasiveness. This is where rhetoric comes back into play once again. This time around, the writer "tests" their piece for its compelling arguments. The main objective here is to learn how the readers will respond to your work. In the movie business, producers often provide pre-screening of their movies to garner feedback and see if what they have is working. In writing, the writer would want to ask some people to read a draft of their communication in that way that the writer intended them to read and use the finished communication. You would want to pick test readers who closely represent your audience. For example, asking your manager to read over your report before it is present to the board of director would be a good idea. Asking a neighbor to read it would not yield desirable results. As a writer, you'd want to gain as much feedback as possible. It is important to remain impartial as not all feedback are what you as a writer wants to here. Once all feedback are collected, interpret them thoughtfully and thoroughly before making any changes.