Document Development Exposition: Letter, Email, and Cover Letter

ENGL 2116

Explain in detail your document’s development from planning to finish, describing your
challenges, how you overcame them, and what you learned.

Planning
Feeling confident that the previous assignment had gone accordingly, I was determined I was
getting the gist of this class. Another very familiar piece of workplace correspondence and an
opportunity to show off my lovely resume. Unfortunately, the teacher could not make class,
so we were not afforded the opportunity to include our resume and cover letter. Instead we
would overweight the email and letter to compensate for this absence, so once again it was
time to outline my plan. I decided that I would represent the SPCA and write a letter to PETA
requesting information that was going to be a part of a larger national survey of animal rights
organizations. For the email, I missed the detail that it was for an internal party rather than an
organization with internal knowledge so it was written for someone who would be an
“insider”.

First Draft (for peer editing)

I began with the letter first. Using a standard United States Military letter head template, I
updated it to reflect as if it had come from the SPCA. I am a simplistic person when it comes
to style and am of the persuasion that less is more. I wrote a standard introduction which
included a salutation and moved into the purpose of the letter. Then I introduce the
information I am requesting with a bulleted list since it is not sequential the order answered. I
then explain why this information is necessary to the intent and conclude with a break out
statement thanking them for their time. Next, I wrote the email, which as mentioned above I
misinterpreted as supposed to be for someone with internal knowledge rather than
organizationally internal. Regardless I wrote out a fully formed email that included the
findings of the made-up study, the solution to the made-up study, and a conclusion and off to
peer review it went.

Second Draft (for your packet)

Once again, I received back a peer reviewed assignment with minimal notes. The only note
on the letter was one asking what the word “Destroyed” means when referring to animals, but
since the assignment was supposed to be for internal use and verbiage that would be familiar
to those in the industry I decided to retain that word. The only note for the email was a
highlighted portion that asked about the solution. When I explained to the peer reviewer that
the sentence before the one they highlighted predicates the solution, they understood. In all,
with the minimal feedback I got back, I felt confident that these writing satisfied the
requirements set forth and decided to submit the assignment.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

 Document Development Exposition: Letter, Email, and Cover Letter
ENGL 2116

The internal mistake I had made on the email lead the teacher to note that I needed to re-write
the email. Fortunately, I was able to change the words “YOUR” to “OUR” and “PETA” with
“SPCA” with a little keyboard magic and presto! it became an internal email. I added a
subject line that was requested and added more descriptive headers to the email and letter. I
also did away with the pesky spacing that word automatically generates when you press the
enter key. I learned that word automatically adds those when you type a heading, so I will
retain that knowledge for future writings. I also broke out the good will statement at the end
as requested in the revisions and numbered the questions that were previously an unordered
list.