To: Matilda Murray
From: Ethan Fung
Date: June 8th, 2022
Subject: Review of your definition assignment
Dear Matilda,
I have read your definition of the term historiography and thought that your writing was very well organized and appropriately suited for the target demographic. The assignment you submitted was a great rough draft however, I do have a few suggestions:
Word choice: I found the choice of some words in your assignment to be a little confusing. In general, I got the gist of what you were trying to convey but, some words could have been less ambiguous. For example, in the “History of Historiography” section you claim that “historiography became more utilized”. Firstly, to correct the grammar it should be “utilized more”, but I don’t think utilized is the right word. Statements like “became more popular” or “Historiography always existed, but it was never widely used until…..” would convey that statement better. I would recommend going through the entire assignment to adjust for word choice.
Grammar/Sentence structure: There are some run-on sentences and missing punctuation in the assignment. For example, “As new scientific methods developed and studying history became more popular historical facts started to be questioned, either by historians discovering more evidence or science disproving a theory.”. This sentence was quite confusing, and I had to re-read this sentence multiple times due to the lack of punctuation. I would put a period instead of a comma after “started to be questioned” and then start a new sentence. Please review your work, mostly in the “History of Historiography” section, and add punctuation to make it clearer for those who are reading.
Missing assignment requirements: In the instructions for this assignment, it said to “define a reading situation” which is missing in your assignment.
Content: The content and examples you gave of historiography were very well written especially in the last two subsections of your expanded definition. I would recommend adding one or a few shorter examples to really push home the value of historiography and why we study it. When choosing another example of historiography, I would suggest choosing a popular, relatively current event so readers may recall the situation and look at it through the lens of historiography. A final point I would like to make is the detail that was put into the last section was great however, I think you could narrow your focus and deliver your point more directly.
Overall, I was impressed by your writing, once the grammar and minor sentence structure errors are fixed you will have written a splendid definition of historiography. Hopefully, my suggestions helped you recognize some errors. If you do not agree with some of my criticisms, have questions, or would like help do not hesitate to reach out to me. I wish you the best of luck with the revision of your definition assignment.
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