Memorandum

To:
From:
Date:
Subject:

Professor Thompson
Lydia Ryan
9/11/16
Analysis of Work Article and Internship Report

Introduction
This memorandum report is a prose and grammar analysis of two prior writings: an article for my
group at work and an internship report for my professor. I found many prose, grammar, and style
findings in both papers.

Being Concise:
To be concise means using only the words necessary to meet the audience needs and your
purpose for writing to them.
Lard:
I wrote a lot of lard in my article for my coworkers. I padded my prose with words that
did not contribute to meaning at all.
Even though many would complain about him, I think he used his eccentricity to
prepare (and scare) us for future CS classes that would be much harder.
The sentence would not have any lard if the last portion of the sentence said, for future,
harder CS classes.
Unnecessary repetition and redundant words:
I used redundant words in this phrase below.
The first review, my code was too complicated, hard to read, and overall, poorly
written;
This sentence should be The first review, my code was complicated and hard to read to
reduce repetition and redundancy.
Dead phrases:
When analyzing, I saw that I repeatedly used dead, lard-like words.
Agile development is a certain way of developing products incrementally by
features.
This word should be eliminated to improve clarity and conciseness in this sentence.

Unnecessary modifiers:
I used an unnecessary modifier in both my papers. For example, I used simply and
actually in both sentences below.
My internship at SEL this past semester taught me so many practical and handson knowledge that I simply could not learn in my classes.
And so, I will tell you my journey in how I figured out how to think like a
programmer and how I "designed" my solutions before I actually implemented the
code.
Both of these modifiers do not contribute any meaning to the sentences, so they can both
be eliminated to make the sentences more concise.
Level of specifics and detail
This cause was my favorite and I loved looking for it in both my papers. Below is a good
example of detail that was not needed for my audience, which was my professor.
Since I have only been a software engineer intern for about nine months, my boss
wanted to go through a few code reviews with himself (lead software engineer),
another software engineer, and a development manager.
The last portion of the sentence should be eliminated, for that information is not needed
for my audience.

Being Precise
To be precise means to use technical terminology (jargon appropriate to the audiences
knowledge.
Jargon
I used too much work jargon in my internship report to my professor. In this example
below, the phrase to test IRIG on our SEL-3355 computer serial cards is jargon at SEL.
My professor may not know what IRIG is and he probably does not know exactly what
the SEL-3355 computer is either.
My boss, Shane Corbin, gave me a task to develop a tool that would help the
software developers and technicians in my group to test IRIG on our SEL-3355
computer serial cards.
To improve this sentence and make it precise, I could say to test time information on our
computer serial cards, so my professor can fully understand what I am talking about.
Precise terminology and definitions
I found that I used a term that I did not define for my audience, not defining this term
may have been confusing for my professor.
but also attending daily standup meetings and bi weekly demo meetings

To improve preciseness, I could write and bi weekly demo meetings, where we

displayed the finished product to the team.
Use precise terminology correctly
I used correct and precise terminology without having to define them for my audience,
for my professor knows that Im talking about courses, CS 270 and CS 240 when I say
System Software and Operating Systems. My professor has taught for many years and
teaches one of the classes.
My overall experience at Schweitzer was very educational, implementing the
things that I learned in System Software and Operating Systems,

Being Direct
A direct prose style is straightforward, using strong nouns and verbs, the active voice, and topic
and stress position.
Strong nouns and verbs
In this example, the nouns are strong, and the verb crushed is also strong, giving you a
clear picture of what I meant when I could not figure out a solution.
My expectations of being a brilliant programmer were crushed into the number of
errors I had in my code.
One thing Id change to make this sentence more direct is to turn being to becoming,
making that verb stronger.
Use mostly active voice
I remember using the passive voice in this work article. I was tempted to use it because
everything happened in the past, but someone gave me feedback and told me to change it
to active voice. Here is a paragraph written in the active voice, using active verbs such as
resisted and figured instead of had resisted and had figured.
I resisted the temptation of even touching my computer before thinking through
the whole solution. I figured out what the assignment was asking, wrote down
functions or classes that were needed, and then wrote pseudo code (with arrows
and boxes) connecting one function to the other.
Use topic and stress position
In the example below, the topic and stress position is terrible. Topic position is at the
beginning and sets the topic of that sentence or paragraph. The first sentence is very off
topic to the rest of the paragraph. The first sentence talks about code reviews and the rest
of the paragraph discusses the model that I used for my program. The stress position for
this paragraph is also not very good. It does not summarize the paragraph, but is a little
side comment of where I am now.
Since I have only been a software engineer intern for about nine months, my boss
wanted to go through a few code reviews with himself (lead software engineer),
another software engineer, and a development manager. The first review, my code

was too complicated, hard to read, and overall, poorly written; I did not have
many functions and there were too many things going on at once. They told me to
rewrite it using the model-view-control method for gui applications. This was a
huge learning experience for me. I created a new design (a picture) using a macro
in Confluence (Atlassian tool) that was the MVC pattern for my program. The
model was a file that had all the lower level, bit twiddling functions to get time,
the view was solely Qt widgets (buttons, labels, etc.), and the controller was
controlling the events from the view to the model and getting information from
the model to the view. I am also complete with actually refactoring all the code to
this model.
To fix the topic position, I could insert this sentence at the beginning of the paragraph: The code
review process taught me two things: a new model for my code and how to write better, clearer
code. The stress position sentence could be: This MVC model was a very valuable lesson for
me and I have even implemented this method at school.

Noticeable Grammar Error

Missing Period/Colon
A comma splice combines two or more sentences with commas. I found one
mistake in my internship report.
My overall experience at Schweitzer was very educational, implementing
the things that I learned in System Software and Operating Systems,
learning how to program in Python, navigating around different versions
of Linux, and practicing agile software development.
To fix this error, a period should replace the comma after educational and after
that period should be I implemented the things that I learned in System Software
and Operating Systems, learned how to program in Python, navigated around
different versions of Linux, and practiced agile software development.

Conclusion
A major weakness I found was using a lot of lard in my sentences, using unnecessary modifiers
and words. One way I can fix this is to notice this weakness and look for it when I review my
papers before I turn them in. When doing this analysis, I was most surprised by how many
findings I found, but I enjoyed doing it, it was like a treasure hunt with lots of treasure.