Chapters 10 & 14

Chapter 10 touched on the details that go into technical communication when writing memos and letters. The diagrams for writing letters stood out the most, in my opinion. I have tons of experience with writing professional/business letters to authorities that more important than the average note to one of my friends. However, I've always wondered what the exact specifications are in doing so. I know there are pref-formatted templates for use in Microsoft Word and other composition software products but that has made it too easy in the past. How would I ever know enough to write a letter on my own? Or even, by hand (shocking!)?

From my experience, I was already aware of the separate sections of a formal letter like putting the return address at the top of the page, the insider address below that, and the date somewhere in between, before or after. The first diagram that caught my attention in the "Letter Formatting" section displayed the "Block Format" for writing a letter. It is one of the two standard letter formats used. This diagram expressed, not only the order of the date, return address, and inside address, but the amount of spacing that is to go between each of them and the other sections of the letter. It even emphasizes the importance of the margin spacing along the edges of the page. These are exquisite details that I never thought twice about until now. I certainly gained a lot of knowledge in this chapter and only talked about one of the minor diagrams (Block Format) that caught my attention. Not to mention, the "Modified Block Format". I could write on about this chapter for days.

Chapter 14 is all about writing exceptional summaries to provide an overview of the most outstanding and relevant facts in order to save time and get right to the point. Writing summaries consists of summarizing either your own writing or someone else's writing. The summary should describe, in short form, what the original document is all about, help readers decide whether to read all of the long document, parts of it, or none of it, and give readers a framework for understanding the full document that will follow if they do plan to read it.

From what I am used to, writing a summary means that I should take very much time and just talk about the overall objective of the original document. The first idea of summarizing in this chapter points out the four elements of writing an effective summary. Accuracy, Completeness, Conciseness, and Nontechnical Style. Breaking summaries down into the four ideas alone, made me rethink the way I go about writing a summary. There is much more to think about than simple "summarizing" the document.

Next, the chapter goes through the steps of writing a summary. This was the key section in this chapter for me because it is one thing to say, take your time, map out what you are summarizing, and keep the purpose of writing the actual summary in mind before just jumping into writing one, than to slowly map out the steps. It is almost like they knew they were explaining how to write a summary to someone like me who is initially thinking, "Let's get this done. Let's start writing right now."