English 4183 Final Assessment

Over the course of this semester, I feel as though I have grown as an editor. I
have used a variety of different platforms and tools to edit and manipulate
documents that I had previously had no experience with. One of which was
Weebly, a website development tool, which I used to produce my final
portfolio.
The editing process consisted of individual revisions and partner revisions. All
of the documents that I was given to edit were digital files so I decided to do
all of my editings on the computer using Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word.
One of the programs I used to do editing was Adobe Acrobat. I used
comments, highlights, and strikethrough to mark up the documents. I also
used Microsoft Word for the first project, utilizing the track changes and
comments features. I found that I enjoy editing document more in Adobe
Acrobat because my suggestions can be made in a clean and simple way.
Although, I think that using track changes and comments in Microsoft Word
would be more convenient for the author of the document because, they
wouldnt have to switch back and forth between two programs; all the
suggested changes could be viewed, approved, and discarded within Word.
Though, I still believe that all final documents should be submitted in PDF
format because of its static final format. The technical goals of the edits were
to improve the consistency and clarity of the document so that it would be
easily understood by the audience as well as conflicting design and layout
practices.

The Handbook of Technical Writing was a very useful resource though

out the course of this class. It helped me clear up a variety of grammatical
confusion which allowed me to provide the most useful suggestions possible
to authors. For example, it helped me identify the difference between
affect and effect as well as the difference between credible and
creditable, to name a few. I will definitely be using this book in the future
when composing and editing documents.
Having the ability to collaborate with peers when editing documents
was helpful as well. Peer collaboration allowed me to catch various errors
and inconsistencies I overlooked on my own. I was also able to learn from
their styles of editing and the way they approach the process. Many times I
realized I was missing many issues pertaining to the audience and the
purpose. Peer editing showed me the points I was missing and allowed me
the opportunity to reach out and for guidance when identifying these issues.
I feel as though collaboration produces the best results for editing because of
the different points of view and I will be using this technique in the future.
Over the course of the semester, I have encountered very few
problems that couldnt be solved with more than just a Google search, but
one major problem I had was printing my documents with comments. When I
would go to print some of my PDF documents I would hit Summarize
Comments and everything would print out just fine. However, a few of my
documents would print the first few pages without issue but, the majority of
the document would be blank pages with a bold black line at the top. I

wrestled with this issue for hours until I gave up and decided to just submit
an online portfolio instead of a physical one. I still have not found a solution
to this issue though various forums suggest that it is an issue within the
Adobe Acrobat Reader program that is still yet to be addressed by Adobe.

Project A: This project was a chapter of the SLO3 Cultural Awareness

Second Case Study. This document examined the roles that social and
cultural diversity play in becoming a successful student at UNC Charlotte.
Upon reviewing the document a few significant issues, I came across that
stuck out were the inconsistency with the bullet point capitalization,
inconsistency with heading levels, and transitions between sections of the
document. I also noticed some other issues such as the multicolored
formatting of the tables and minor grammatical issues throughout. Also, the
European spelling of theatre was used in place of the Americanized
version, theater. As I came across these issues I noted them and for some
made suggestions as to how to resolve the issue. As I work towards a
portfolio version I intend to review this document further for any possible
issues that had been overlooked in previous versions.
Project B: This project was a document was an evaluation of the usability of
the new Atkins Library WordCat system. The student authors recruited five
undergraduate students observed them using the system. When reviewing

the document, I noted that were not working in the document were the
figures. In the paragraphs, there were references to images that werent
even there. The spaces for those figures to go was there as well as a black
box but the actual figures themselves were not there. Also, there was some
inconsistency when referencing the Get It function throughout. The final
thing I noticed was that I had some difficulty reading thought the large chart
towards the end of the document. Possibly a different color scheme would
help and that all the lines dividing cells were present.
Project C: This project was a document was a compilation of data that was
collected by a team of community engagement experts at UNC Charlotte. It
consisted of the various goals and accomplishment established and met by
the university. When reviewing the document, one of the consistent issues I
noticed was with the page numbers, the page numbers are not sequential
and on some pages, they overlap. I also notice that there was a lot of
variation between text alignment between left and justified. Text color was
one of the more major issues, the dramatic colors make the text hard to read
and put a lot of strain on peoples eyes, I think it would be best just to leave
all of the text black. The chart on page 7 I would recommend having the
circles be changed to rectangles and to have contrasting colors between the
text and background. My final major concern is the blue box that is on the
last page, Im not really sure of what its purpose is or why its there.
Project D: This project was a usability testing report of the UNC Charlotte
Help Pages. The authors conducted a usability test on the Help page of the

new WordPress system that the university is providing for instructors to

create their own websites. Overall, there werent very many design issues in
this document but there were definitely some inconsistencies in language.
Such as UNC Charlotte sometimes being spelled out the way it should be,
and other times abbreviated UNCC. Another issue I noticed was CLAS not
being spelled out until halfway through the assessment though it was
abbreviated prior. The majority of the issues I noticed were wording and
sentence structure issues.