Memorandum

To: Katie Krahn

From: Emmett Brooks
Date: August 29th, 2023

Per your request, I have analyzed a previous report I wrote on the use of Advanced Footwear
Technology in the sport of athletics. In this memorandum, I critiqued my essay on four concepts:
Being concise in my writing, acting out a precise writing style, was I being direct? And finally, I
reviewed my essay for various grammatical errors.

Being Concise: To be concise means to be brief yet comprehensive.

Unnecessary Repetition. Throughout my essay, I repeated the phrase Advanced
Footwear Technology Multiple times. I would use this phrase to refer to the technology
in the shoes, when, I could have simply called it shoe technology and earned the same
effect.
 Advanced Footwear Technology has transformed the sport of running, and its
effects can be observed in many different ways.
Listing out the full name is unnecessary in this sentence because it is overly wordy.
Replacing it with “These shoes” would be an effective way to make it read more
smoothly.
Redundant Words and/or Phrases. In this essay, there were a few redundancies, the
foremost being the sheer number of times I stated the following concept.
 Wearing Advanced Footwear Technology does not make running feel easier, but
it makes you feel faster.
Looking back over this paper, I made this claim multiple times, but did not fully explain
it after presenting the idea. To be concise, I should have simply dedicated a more
structured paragraph to the point.
Dead Phrases. A dead phrase would be an unnecessary phrase added in with no real
benefit to the essay. This occurred several times throughout the paper, but most
commonly when I was stating my opinion.
 Now when it comes to sprinting, I think these shoes have even less of a benefit.
In this phrase, there is no point in adding the words “I think.” Any reader tasked with
slogging through this essay knows that the paper is a collection of my opinions supported
by various articles.
 Unnecessary Modifiers. As the self-proclaimed king of unnecessary modifiers, finding
examples of useless modifying words in this paper is not difficult. An example of this
would be any time I am telling a story.
 Studies have found that ice baths do very little to actually decrease soreness, but if
the athlete thinks that the bath helped, it can still increase performance.
The phrase “actually decrease soreness” does not require the word actually. Simply
stating that ice baths do not decrease soreness would be just as effective.
Be Precise. When communicating with your audience, it is important to be precise when
explaining the technical terms and ideas.
Audience Levels of Technical Expertise. The topic I selected for my essay is not a well-
known debate, so many of my readers will be unfamiliar with the slang that runners use. I
did my best to explain all of the terms I used, but a couple of them got past me.
 The four-minute mile is one of the hardest barriers in track to break.
The phrase “Breaking four” is common among runners, many people without experience
would not understand the meaning of this. In order to avoid confusion I should’ve gone
into more detail to explain the term.
Consistent Terminology. Though I was careful not to confuse my reader by changing up
the terminology constantly, one that tripped me up was the idea of a plate that can be
built into the sole of a shoe. The issue with this was that it is commonly referred to as a
“Carbon fiber plate,” even though many shoe producers made these plates out of different
materials.
 However, instead of using a full-length carbon fiber plate, Adidas put multiple
fiberglass rods in their shoes.
It was difficult to help the reader understand the concept without being too ambiguous. A
good remedy for this could be to devote a larger portion of my essay to explaining these
“plates.”
Level of specifics detail. When communicating a new topic to the audience, the level of
detail is important. In my essay, I was careful not to invoke death by stats upon my
reader, so I am happy with the level of detail I provided. Though I did not dive very deep
into the miniscule statistics, those that I provided did an effective job of proving my
point.
Be Direct. To be direct means to get to the point without embellishment and free from
ambiguity.
Active vs. Lazy Verbs. As I analyzed my essay, I was dismayed to see that my verbs
were generally not spicy enough. Improving this could have reduced visual clutter, and
made the paper less boring.
 Until 2016, people would say that most running shoes are all the same.
 Replacing the word “say” with “assert,” or “conclude” would improve the boring
structure of this sentence.
Active vs. Passive Voice. While writing this essay, I did not spend much time
considering whether I should use and active vs. a passive voice. Instead, I focused on
writing what sounded natural. However, there were a few times that I could’ve changed
between the two.
 Since then, several different models and versions of these “supershoes” have been
released.
This would be considered passive, and if I wanted to change that, I could re-write it like
this: These “supershoes” have since then been released.
Topic Position. Though many of my topics were very effective in summarizing the
content of the following paragraph, a few of them were a bit lazy.
 Now these shoes were not an overnight success.
This topic sentence is a bit too general. It didn’t represent very much of the information
included in that paragraph, and to improve that, I could’ve made it longer.
Stress Position. This refers to the most important part of a paragraph. In this essay, there
were a few paragraphs that left the reader confused on what they had just learned.
 With the aggressive design of these shoes, it is important to have strong ankles
and calves in order to avoid injury.
I used this sentence to conclude a paragraph, which could seriously mislead the reader.
That sentence does not summarize the paragraph leading up to it, and it seems to open up
a new train of thought.
Noticeable Error. This could be an error in spelling, but it could also be an issue of grammar or
sentence format.
Missing comma for an introductory element. I made a few mistakes when commas and
other punctuations were involved, but this was one that was particularly glaring.
 For most amateur runners no one wants to spend the equivalent of 158
McChicken sandwiches on some running shoes.
Putting a comma after amateur runners would be correct punctuation on this sentence.
Conclusion. The paper that I chose to review was the longest paper I have written. It was a
massive project, and finishing it felt like a big accomplishment. Going back and reviewing it has
been an interesting exercise, and I noticed a few different places for improvement. In future
papers, I will focus on being more concise, particularly when it comes to unnecessary repetition.