English 420Y - Business Writing Online

This document was especially hard to create for various reasons. First, it applies to a highly diverse audience ranging from children to business owners. It is espcially hard to create an appealing design. Also, I thought that many hispanic people would be participating so I tried using simple words in an attempt to make the brochure as easy to read as possible. It was a challenge to make the brochure professional for the businessman, but gain the attention of a child. To achieve this goal, we used strong organization points with question headers (Can’t be there on Christmas?), bullets (What services do we offer?), and fonts (White/Black variety) to make it look professional. The box design and shadowing also aided in that attempt. To gain the attention of the child, I tried to gain their interest through photographs. As stated in Chapter 24 of the text, photographs can “convey information and content” and also can “help your reader see what you mean.” For example, in the sections of the brochure where volunteer opportunities are discussed, there is a photograph to dipict nearly every discription (i.e. wrapping and food volunteering). The photographs “convey information and content.” Using photographs is also apart of Lutz Rules of Communication by keeping it simple. The pictures are examples that show evidence for the persuasive argument. As stated in Chapter 24 of the text a photograph can be used “to prove a point and to persuade a reader that a particular interpretation of an image has merit.” Hopefully we are persuading the reader to want to learn more and eventually volunteer.

The second challenge of creating the document was conciseness and principles of variety. There was a lot of information that was perdinent to the brochure. Just fulfilling the specified requirements alone required lots of text. Chapter 37 of the text was really helpful in creating desirable reading text. My sentences were varied in the paragraphs that I describe the Christmas Dinner. I changed the S-V order and vary between simple, compound, and complex sentences. I agree with the book in that it does sound better written that way.

The final challenge of creating the document was the design itself. I must be honest in saying that working in Mircosoft Word was a huge challenge in itself when creating columns with the brochure. I would have prefered to use Microsoft Publisher; however, I do not own that program. Thankfully someone in my group is clearly more skilled at designing in Microsoft Word. It was somewhat of a team effort, but without his skill it would not look so good.

Overall, while creating the document I kept in mind the principles of variety, conciseness, audience, and design. A difficult task was given, but I think our group did very well.