Overall, this has been an intense and challenging journey, but it has also been a rewarding and informative one. I have grown as a writer and learned more about my weakness as a writer. I will now be able to know what to pay attention to in my writing when I am proofreading.
On this journey, the biggest strength I believe I have gained is being able to write in a more concise manner. The bullet point format of the peer review helped me with this. Since then bullets points meant to be concise. The biggest key I have learned to more concise writing is using precise language. This has meant I have had to expand my vocabulary which will help me in the long run.
More importantly, I have learned that although certain tricks and editing techniques help; concise writing is a state of mind. It involves a focus on statements of facts and adding value. I try to read my work from the perspective of my expected audience with the criterion; does this sentence add value to me? Reading a document from this perspective helps to stay concise. I have slowly started to write with this mindset instead of having to employ it in the editing process.
It will be important for me to carry this thought process with me into my working career. Working professionals do not have time to read long overexplained memos. As I said before I’ll have to stick to the facts and be precise in my language.
A weakness throughout this course has been my constant use of first pronouns such as “you” and “I”. This also contributed to my difficulties in my ability to write in a concise manner. However, I believe these are merely symptoms of a larger problem. That problem I believe is my inability to differentiate between writing and speaking to an audience. There Are many ways the two ideas overlap tremendously yet they also differ in many crucial ways. Since I focus too heavily on writing as though I am talking to them directly, I often make certain stylistic and grammatical mistakes. One of which is my constant use of first-person pronouns as well as writing run-on sentences.