English 421 08-01 4:30-5:20 MWF

To: Jason Buchanan
From: Emily Fortener, Nick Welsh
Subject: In Class Activity
Date: 18 February 2008
• Good use of visuals.
• Clear section headers.
• Wasted space with only one column used.
• The document is “skimmable”.
• Uses rationale and supporting ideas.
• Good conversational.
• Aids decision making with good visual elements.
• Simple and clear sentences
• Uses a readable font.
• Doesn’t repeat words or use clichés.
• Appears to tell us the truth.
• Good use of organization.
• Seems appropriate for audience.
• Back up what they say.
• Has consistent format.
• The report provides summaries.
• Good use of citation.
• Too much whiteness.
• Mention where the statistics came from.
• The header and footer design adds visual appeal.

Ryan Hedlund
Tom Chambers
Nick Nabb

IN CLASS EXCERSIE 2-18-08

 Lots of white space
 Went form global warming to natural disasters such as global flooding
 May not have understood due to the fact that I skimmed to save on time on this in class assignment
 Some weird spacing going on
 Jumped around
 Not very good flow
 Not clear idea to what is trying to be proven or stated
 Compared a billiard ball to earth
 Says global flooding goes to hurricanes and tsunamis
 Expand view to natural disasters or stick strictly to global flooding
 Used images very well
 Hit different regional areas
 Says what you can do to be prepared
 But on that it is a little light
 Talks about side effects of disaster
 Not helpful to every or average reader
 Says every is affected by weather which is true but some are more drastically tan others
 Not many sources stated
 Talks about people but no personal story to back up claims
 No history of disaster
 Didn’t talk about events leading up to global flooding and warming
 Preventative maintenance?????

To: Jason Buchanan
From: Sarah Griffith and Caleb Mikels
Date: 18 February 2008
Subject: In Class Assessment

•Too many statistics in the introduction
•Executive Summary is out of place; it should be before the introduction
•Biased because it puts more emphasis on planning for the disaster not the disaster itself (global flooding)
•No solutions
•Repeats a lot as the online reading discusses (“Non-Sucky Writing”)
•Some of the graphics are unnecessary such as the gas price picture
•At the end, it has a summary; this should be a conclusion
•The setup could have more use of the page
•Document is skimmable
•Could have possibly put more time into planning (As the course pack reading states)
•In the last paragraph of page six, they should have specifically stated the facts from the EPA instead of leaving it up to the reader to find them

Good
Graphics, pictures
Easy to skim: good layout, font, structure
Small quote or summary on left side
Structure: breakdown into three groups, parallel answers (bird by bird)
“Who are you” section- makes paper personal
Bad
Content
Statistics – describe problem first
Too much white space between graphics
Valerie Dooling
Jonathan Krygsman

To: Jason Buchanan
From: Dave Zelinsky, Billy Shuman
Date: 2/18/08
Subject: White Paper review

• Executive Summary does not summarize the white paper effectively
• Intro does not address research
• Goal is too vague and unclear
• Weak on “previous approaches”
• Not very skim able
• Good use of graphics
• Avoids use of unnecessary clichés
• Vague title

Brandon Drake, Adam Kruzel
English 421
February 18, 2008

Critique of Global Flooding White Paper
• Good Use of White Space
• Might choose a better font
• Good page formatting
• Good use of pictures to capture attention
• Fluid writing, not redundant

To: Jason Buchanan
From: Brian Schoolcraft, Daniel Block
Subject: response
Date: February 18, 2008

Effectiveness: Good use of cause, action, effect organization

Design: The design of the report is good but there seems to be a lot of wasted space when only the right side of the document is used for text.

Structure: Reference Gareth’s “Give Good Headline” section to improve the structure and quick-read aspects of the White Paper. Having some headings in sections would make it easier to find important points of reference.

Skimmability: The quotes on the left hand side of the page help, but there needs to be more of them or more content in them- for them to be more functional

Visual use: Many of the visuals seem to be very generic-redundant (2 pictures of hurricanes-is this necessary?) Tables with actual data or factsheets would convince the reader better than disaster images.

Content clarity: Under the potential impacts section on page 7, it says that inland dwellers will be indirectly affected, but the article does not mention how they will be indirectly affected. Examples needed.

Changes: See above.

To: Jason Buchanan
From: Joseph Kinney
Date: 2/20/08
Subject: Fuel Whtie Paper

Good
-------------
-Design
-Problem/Solution Layout in margins
-Choice of Font (sans serif)
-Interesting method of citing sources
-Skimmable

Bad
-------------
-Some pages are missing the additional comments in the margins
-In the titles, sometimes solutions are mentioned before problems.

Yi Hou
ENGL 421
02/22/08
Make-up for In class exercise (White paper critique)
Article chosen: Acxiom-fraud

Critique statements:
• Clear flow of overall structure from introduction, backgorund information, and proposed solution options
• The overall strucutre shifted to the right and left, which can give an awkward impression for the audience. However, it does provide freshmenent to viewer between section changes.
• More graphical methods should be applied. Only one numerical figure exists and author should use more diagrams and tables to provide a clearer view regarding the different termimologies presented in the article.
• Small squares embedded throughout the white paper do not seem to be very effective. Since readers may lose focus on the specific topics or ideas in the actual paragraph if they decided to skim through the document using contents within the squares.