Writing the First Draft of Technical Definitions
The writing assignment of this unit required us to produce three types of definitions for a technical term in our field: a parenthetical definition, a sentence definition, and an expanded definition. The task seemed simple to me at first, but I quickly came to realize that the difficult part lies in clearly conveying your knowledge in a concise way that is easy for someone who is not in your field to understand that technical term. I chose the term “linked list” because it is a basic data structure that carry certain advantages over the traditional “indexed system” of storing data such as an array. With the expanded definition, I used four expansion strategies – analysis of parts, operating principle, compare and contrast, and examples. I found the use of visual aids especially helpful in getting the message across as the readers can visually see how data is stored in memory, and I can refer to the parts of the image as I go through the explanation. Regarding the examples section, I was hesitant in putting in the code snippet initially, but I ended up including it in the definition because being able to practically implement a data structure with code is an important skill that every student studying computer science should be equipped with. A code snippet example may seem too in depth for a non-technical audience, but I believe being able to see the code directly and see how each line implements the concepts mentioned in the previous sections can further aid understanding of the term. Lastly, I found the references of this assignment difficult to cite, as most websites had no publication date or author’s name.
Peer Review Process
I was paired with Jackson Kuan for the peer review process, and I reviewed his definitions of the term “electronegativity”. Coming from a science background from my first degree, this term is not foreign to me. After reading Jackson’s definitions, it not only gave me a good review of first year chemistry concepts, but also allowed me to have the perspective of a reader and experience the process of trying to understand a term from the definitions. This experience made me realize the importance of limiting scientific jargon or providing short definitions (such as a parenthetical definition) for unavoidable jargon in our definitions, especially when writing for non-technical audiences. Jackson did a great job in minimizing those jargon and focusing the attention on the term he is defining, but only with a few minor exceptions. I suggested him to consider giving parenthetical definitions for those terms or completely omitting them in the definition. Also, the choice of visuals in his expanded definitions accompanies his explanations well, but the link between the visual and the text is sometimes weak. I suggested him to add some direct references in the text to the figures, such as “The dipole moment, shown as a red arrow in Figure 1, …”. Overall, the peer review process has shown me a great example definition that incorporated strategies that I can mirror in my own writing. I was also glad to have my definitions reviewed by Jackson.
Revision Process
After the peer review, I received criticisms regarding my citations. I have fixed the in-text citations for resources without an author to the format of (website name, year) and omitted the link in the visual in-text citations. Jackson also pointed out that the use of the term “contiguous memory address” may not be understood by a non-technical audience, I have added a couple of sentences to explain that term and how it is related to the advantages linked lists can provide over arrays. The flow of sentences between paragraphs also needed improvement. To avoid the repetitive use of “to” at the beginning of a paragraph, I have adopted Jackson’s suggestion to change it up with other sentence structures, such as “The insertion of an element in the middle of the linked list is done by…”. Lastly, I made the visuals all labelled with figure number to keep consistency. Overall, I appreciate the useful suggestions Jackson has provided for my work. Having a second edit on my definitions allowed me to revise and change them to be more clear and concise.