3130 Document Analysis

English 3130 Project

For this assignment, you will find a business document and conduct a rhetorical analysis of its purpose, audience, content design, format design, etc.

Here are a few simple steps to follow:

Step 1. Selecting the document for your analysis
For the purpose of this analysis, you could pick any kind of business document: a memo, a letter, a department guideline, a company policy, a website, a tutorial, etc. However, keep the following considerations in mind:

  • The document design should be of mediocre quality, meaning it neither has a top-notch design nor would make the “documents that suck” list. To put it another way, if you were to grade it, you’d give it a C rather than an A or F.
  • Avoid documents that are too extensive. For example, it would probably be impossible for you to analyze the entire website of Coca-Cola. If you really like a certain document that’s big , what you could do is to focus on one section of the document. For the purpose of this assignment, a document of 1-5 pages is appropriate.
  • The document should be balanced in the amount of text vs. graphics, with neither too much text nor too many graphics.

Step 2. Analyze the context for the document
Ask some basic questions:

  • Who owns the document?
  • Who wrote/designed the document?
  • Who is the intended audience of the document?
  • What purposes do you think the document intended to accomplish?

Step 3. Analyze to what extent the document is or is not effective
Do some research about effective document design. Read our textbook, find some articles or books in the library, and search for credible discussions on the Internet. Synthesize your research findings and develop a set of criteria that’s specific to the particular document you’re analyzing.In analyzing the document, you will certainly consider some common aspects of document design:

  • content design (appropriate content? proper amount of information? understandable language? good writing)
  • use of graphics (are graphics well designed? are they meaningfully related to the text? are they effectively used? are they appropriate? are they of good quality?)
  • page layout (are different elements on the page logically laid out? are text and graphics placed at appropriate positions considering their relationships? is there a good balance between white space and text? are different textual elements properly formatted for visual hierarchy? does the formatting, for example, indicate clearly the different levels of headings?)
  • typography (is the typeface, font size, or style appropriate?)
  • use of color (is the document too plain in color or too colorful? is the use of colors justified? does the color serve the content and the purpose of the document?)

At the same time, do some research about the organization, business, or individual that owns the website. Have a good understanding of the needs of the business/organization/individual and the purposes of the website. Based on your knowledge of the intended purposes of this particular document and your knowledge of effective document design in general, provide an objective analysis of what aspects of the document were designed effectively and what aspects could be improved..

Step 4. Design Your Analysis
Design the analysis in the memo format. Your report should contain at least the following components:

  • An overview of your report
  • Background information about the organization/business/individual this document is designed for
  • A brief description of the document: its content, its intended audience, and its intended purposes
  • Analysis of the design (the actual analysis could be organized in different ways, whichever you think would be most effective): what seems to work well and why? what could be improved and why? You can also organize this section of your analysis according to design categories. 

Step 5. Turn in your project
You need to turn in two things:

  1. Your analysis saved as “Analysis(YourLastNameYourFirstName).doc” e.g., “Analysis(SmithJohn).docx.”
  2. The original document saved as “Analysis(YourLastNameYourFirstName)-Original.doc”

Note: If the document is online, then you don’t have to send me the original document. Instead, include the url in parentheses after the heading in the subject line.

Email the files as attachments to me at bgu@gsu.edu.