Rubric for Evaluating a Non-sensitive Workplace Document Document: ___ UA Announcement _____________________ Name: _______ Dr. Kim ____________________________

1 This rubric was designed to rate specific aspects of communication behavior. While such ratings will reflect the raters holistic judgment, they cannot be summed to determine overall performance quality because a single behavior can result in negative attention. For example, misspelling your readers name on an email is likely to result in a judgment that a document is not mailableregardless of how marvelous the content and organization of the email is. 2 RPW 3/e refers to the 3rd edition of Revising Professional Writing in Science and Technology, Business, and the Social Sciences (published by Parlay Press in 2011).

lower --- Audience Focus --- higher Your

Rating1

For Future Improvement

Not Mailable NM

Mailable M

Proud to Mail PM

Review RPW/3e2

Link to Video Tutorial on

ProsWrite.com

Comments

Context Little audience focus. Purpose not clear or inappropriate. Somewhat relevant and appropriate to audience.

Message is clearly relevant to audience. Purpose is clear & appropriate.

NM Ch 1 Purpose Ch 2 Audience

I dont believe audience will actually read your document.

Content Development

Information inadequate or inaccurate. Not understandable. Not persuasive.

Information is mostly accurate and understandable. Not memorable or persuasive.

Excellent informative and persuasive details. Accurate. Memorable.

NM Ch 3 Informative Prose Ch 4 Persuasive Prose

Critical information about the bottom line message is not explicitly stated.

Organization

Inefficient. Bottom line hard to find. Logical connections unclear. Inadequate chunking of information.

Bottom line of document appears in first few sentences. Some appropriate chunking of information. Bottom line of sections or paragraphs not always clear.

Efficient. Bottom line for document and for individual sections or paragraphs easy to find. Small chunks of information with clear logical connections.

NM/M

Ch 6 Bottom Lining Ch 7 Paragraph Unity Ch 8 Cohesion Ch 9 Transitions

#1 priority is to review Ch 6 principles on bottom line placement. Come see me if you want help.

Style

Academic, impersonal (e.g., lots of passive and hedges, long & complex sentences, no names or personal pronouns) or unprofessional (e.g., lots of slang or sloppiness).

Limited passive, hedges, long/complex sentences, etc.

Business, conversational, powerful (e.g., short sentences, imperatives, active voice, names, personal pronouns, contractions, and hedges only sensitive information).

NM Ch 11 Conciseness Ch 12 Parallelism Ch 13 Actives/Passives Ch 14 Word Choice Ch 15 Tone

Your tone is bureaucratic. This signals your document has no importance to your audience.

Visual Appeal

Unattractive, unprofessional. Inadequate layout, white space or font choices for information. Graphics are inappropriate or not integrated into document.

Adequate. Some good use of layout, white space, etc. Graphics are appropriate to content but not elegantly designed.

Professional layout. White space and typeface choices greatly enhance purpose and content of document. Elegant graphics integrated into document with labels and captions.

M Ch 5 Inform. Graphics Ch 10 Format

Though this area is OK, you can work on making a more positive impression after mastering other areas.

Mechanics (negative effect only)

Run-ons, comma splices, sentence fragments, subject-verb disagreement, typos/misspellings undermine authority of writer.

None of the issues at left. M Ch 16 Punctuation Ch 17 Fragments Ch 19 Agreement

You have no issues to worry about in this area.