DATE:

August 26, 2016

TO:

Julia Intawiwat

FROM:

Cameron Abernathy

SUBJECT: Chapter 1 - Exercise 1 - Problem 1

I chose the Chevron page to analyze for the first problem of this exercise.
The Chevron page is packed full of content ranging from their project
portfolio to their about page. Each piece of writing I found on the page was
well thought out and well written. It is very professional and concise. They do
well at getting their message across about what the company is, what they
hope to achieve, and what they are currently working on.

Subject and Purpose of Writings

The majority of the writings found on www.chevron.com are informational
pieces. Their intended purpose is to inform the consumer of their project
goals, purpose, and progress. There consists of 5 different navigation links on
the page. The first link is to their project portfolio. This page is filled with
their different energy facilities around the world. It allows for the user to see
all the work that the Chevron Company is doing around the world. It is
written in a very formal and informational manner. Its main purpose is to
provide information on the different power stations. The 4 other navigational
links are in the following order: operations, technology, corporate
responsibility, investors, and about. The operations page is similar to the
project portfolio in the sense that it is meant to provide information about
how the company works and how they do what they do. The corporate
responsibility page explains the moral aspect of the company and what they
hope to achieve overall. The writing on this page is very formal and
reassuring. It communicates to the reader how the company is ethically
sound and how the company works with the communities to provide them
with efficient and reliable energy.

Reason for Writings

Overall the Chevron Company has a very well rounded website with formal,
informational, and concise writings to inform the reader of the companys
work and goals. If the company did not provide these writings on their
website, then the company could suffer severely from lack of information to
the public. They could be liable for not providing the public with proper
information. This could result in conspiracy and even a lawsuit if the
company did not inform the public of their work. Chevron does well at getting
their purpose, progress, and goals across to the reader on their website.

DATE:

August 26, 2016

TO:

Julia Intawiwat

FROM:

Cameron Abernathy

SUBJECT: Chapter 1 - Exercise 1 - Problem 2

The qualities of good technical writing are accuracy, clarity, conciseness,
readability, usability, and correctness. Upon analyzing Case Document 1-1, I
can see a few mistakes that were made in portraying good technical writing.
The first mistake I noticed was how the technical summary or general
summary did not have any visual aids to help the reader understand the
science behind the carbon capture technology. This makes the readability of
the summaries a little more complex because it requires some thinking to
understand the content of the summaries. The second mistake I noticed was
there isnt a whole lot of usability with the summaries. It talks about one
method that is most likely to be used in the future, but it only highlights
other ideas and merely states that more research and development is
needed to implement those other ideas on an industrial scale. Lastly, I felt at
times that the clarity of the document was a little foggy. In the technical
summary it is hard to follow along with all of the information and ideas that is
being thrown into the picture. It can be difficult to cypher out the good ideas
from the bad.
Overall the document is well written, but could be written even better if more
time and organization was put into it. It is accurate, concise and correct, but
can be hard to read, cant be used effectively, and is unclear at times.