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Memorandum
To: Karen Thompson
From: Adrian Beehner
Date: January 16th, 2017
Subject: Project 1: Technical and Scientific Prose Style

This memo illustrates my discoveries after examining my prose style from prior writing. The
following sections cover the analysis of the prior writing for being concise, precise, and direct.
The prior writing used was originally from an eight-page research paper I wrote for ENGL 102.

Being Concise
To be concise means using only the words necessary to meet audience needs and your purpose
for writing to them. Papers that are considered concise do not have any unnecessary words.

Unnecessary Repetition: I recognized instances of unnecessary repetition within my

sentences. For instance, I mentioned the phrase destructively harmful when I was
describing the effects of Online Piracy:

Online Piracy within the Entertainment industry is a major issue that is

destructively harmful to everyone involved, due to the increasing distribution of
digital entertainment, the use of BitTorrent programs (peer to peer file sharing),
and the U.S. proposed bills Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) & Protect Intellectual
Property Act (PIPA).

I could have easily eliminated destructively and chose a stronger word than harmful
such as detrimental to convey my point.

Dead Phrases: Dead phrases occurred in many areas of my writing, although this
contributed nothing to the content. For example, I use the phrase none the less to
explain that Online Piracy is illegal still:

None the less, Online Piracy is illegal, it involves stealing work from someone,
and that makes it morally wrong and considered thievery, it is not a necessity like
food, water, or shelter and ultimately there is no way to say it is right, besides
saying that stealing it doesnt harm anyone too much

Slidedoc 4: How to Write the Memo Report suggests to revive some dead phrases with
another word. I could have changed None the less to However.

Unnecessary Modifiers: I use many modifiers in my paper that were unnecessary, as

they did not contribute much to the meaning. My description of what is theft begins with
the modifier generally:
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Generally, its easy to imagine a person who is a thief; they blend in, sneak, and
take what isnt theirs, stealing cars, money, etc., but what about stealing
copyrighted files while sitting behind a computer screen?

The modifier here contributes nothing to the content, but rather weakens the statement. I
should have removed it.

Being Precise
To be precise means to use technical terminology (jargon) appropriate to the audiences
knowledge for them to understand your purpose.

Jargon: I struggled with this area in my paper. My papers audience was not major
related nor technology related yet I used technical terms that I should have explained in
plain English. For instance, when I try to describe a torrent file:

The torrent file, a new type of file that has emerged within the realm of Online
Piracy, which utilizes a BitTorrent program to download a single file from various
users computers who own that file, without the trackers associated with common
server based downloads (Peer to peer file sharing).

The jargon used was not appropriate for the audience, and I failed to explain the concepts
in plain English. Instead I added more confusing Jargon to explain the BitTorrent
program. I could have given a simple analogy of the BitTorrent program.

Precise Terminology: I didnt use precise terminology, and instead bogged the audience
down with a definition. In the introduction of my paper, the definition of Online Piracy
is shown:

Online Piracy is a serious dilemma occurring within the world, with so many
people worldwide connected to the internet; it has become so easily accepted and
convenient to illegally download movies, games, music, etc., with the benefit of
never having to purchase them and just steal them with one button click, very
few question the ethics and morality of it.

The audience didnt require a definition; my audience would have known what Online
Piracy is without needing to define it. I could have removed this whole statement without
the audience being confused.

Being Direct
To be direct means to using a straightforward and direct style by choosing strong nouns and
verbs, making intelligent decisions about active and passive voice, and placing ideas in the
correct position for emphasis.
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Strong Nouns and Verbs: There were a few instances where my use of verbs was weak
rather than strong but these weak verbs left the audience with a weak and indirect
sentence. A topic sentence in my paper begins with a passive to be verb causing a
lackluster beginning:

Technology is pushing forward towards an even further enhanced digital world,

where every piece of entertainment will be integrated digitally and every member
of society will have access to the internet.

Following the suggestion of Slidedoc 4: How to Write the Memo Report, When not
defining something, use strong verbs, I could have said Technology pushes forward.

Topic Position: I noticed that many of my topic sentences do not properly use topic
position, as the audience would not get a sense of where my paragraph is going to take
them. In my topic sentence for a paragraph about what two proposed bills would do to the
1st amendment, the topic position gives no sense of direction:

Desperation is only achieved when there are no options left to turn to; the U.S.
Government threatened 1st amendment rights out of desperation when facing the
threat of digital piracy.

The beginning statement has no purpose for topic positon, and only adds empty words.
Furthermore, I should have edited the highlighted text so that it mentioned the two bills
that were the main focus of the paragraph.

Stress Position: I found stress position to be my biggest flaw in my paper. Many of the
sentences I wrote never arrive at a destination. My common error is not trimming the
end and leaving metadiscourse, as shown in the last sentence of one of my paragraphs:

The thing is, uploading is like a virus, one person can get it, and then another,
they both upload that file, more people get it, upload, etc., its a very deadly
process."

Just as the definition of metadiscourse states, my paper comes off as preachy and
pompous. I should have removed this from my research paper

When trying to explain the dangers of Online Piracy, I misuse stress positon and needed
to trim the end as shown:

Online Piracy started from the creation of digital entertainment, where everything
could be copied, downloaded, and shared, creating the perfect storm that now has
amassed to what it is today.

This threw almost all emphasis off of my sentence and instead sounded rather cringe
worthy. I should have left the sentence with the end trimmed or found a better way to
emphasize my statement.
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Noticeable Errors
I did not find any noticeable errors within my paper.

Conclusion
Although I havent ever struggled with writing, and gotten As in all the English courses I have
taken, I realized that my writing isnt nearly as adequate as a I thought. I also realized that I
havent written any serious papers in a very long time, as my major in Computer Science has left
me with no advanced writing experience until now. I follow the trend of having long sentences, a
few dead phrases, I tend to use technical terms not appropriate for my audience, and I ramble
with extra information that hurts the impact of my writing. I am not a proficient direct or precise
writer in any regard, writing for page numbers and word counts has given me bad writing habits
that I need to further fix and improve upon in the future.