The following presents excerpts from a Technical Components section of a Final Technical Report on a new conference registration system created by a software development team in Qatar. The developers believe that the innovative features of their new system make it superior to its competitors. However, their clients (the Qatar National Convention Center) did not find the Executive Summary and Report convincing enough. In the challenges that follow, try to consider the options presented so that the developers can make the most effective case for their audience.

Directions: Identify and improve text that can make the report more effective, in terms of its parallelism, coherence, and concision.

Challenge 2: Being Concise

Your Goal

cutting out unnecessary (already-known, implied or repeated) information.

Concision Example

Less Concise

The goal in having students complete this activity is to show them how concision has the potential to make communication more effective.

More Concise

The purpose of this activity is to show how concision can make communication more effective.

Comments on Response Options

Problem Text

Squlite3 Gem:
While developing and testing our system, we used the SQlite 3 gem. Although this is the most current and latest version, we can continue to update it and make more updated versions.

Option A

“the leading university in Computer science, “

This option cuts out the most unnecessary information which allows it to place emphasis on university’s title.

Option B

“the number one university in Computer Science,”

This option is also concise, but adds information to the university’s title; it would sound good if your purpose is to place emphasis on the title.

Option C

“the university that is number one in Computer Science,”

This option adds to the title like in the second option, but it also keeps unnecessary information, which makes it less concise and would only benefit an audience placing less emphasis on the title.