Pat Barry
PAB Consulting
pat@patbarry.net
847.612.1051

Portfolio: Technical Writing & Editing

~ Developmental Edit ~

This page highlights a comprehensive editing project of a YWCA manual for lifeguards that required significant reorganization and clarification. Included are the original manual, my analysis of the issues and corresponding recommendations, the revised manual with comments regarding outstanding questions, the style sheet, and submission cover letter.

Original YWCA Manual
YWCA Original Manual (pdf)
This "Aquatics" manual is very poorly organized, with rules, policies, and guidelines all together, missing and confusing information, inconsistent usage of terms, and no visual design to help the reader navigate the document.

    Portfolio Categories

    Skills Used
  • Audience analysis
  • Document planning
  • Grammar
  • Style sheet development
  • MS Word
  • Analysis
  • Persuasiveness
  • Copy editing
  • Developmental editing
Comprehensive Analysis
Comprehensive Analysis (pdf)
This document presents an evaluation of the issues with the manual regarding content, organization, visual design, and illustrations and presents corresponding recommendations.
Revised YWCA Manual
Revised YWCA Manual (pdf)
I reorganized the content into sections and added headings and a table of contents to aid navigation. Without a client to answer all the questions, they remain as comments in the Word document but not in the PDF version. Right-click to download the Word version.
YWCA Style Sheet
Style Sheet (pdf)
This is the style sheet I used to ensure consistent formatting and style throughout the document, as well as to note standards that would be used with terminology.
YWCA Cover Letter
Cover Letter (pdf)
The cover letter sent with the revised manual summarizes the most important issues and the major revisions I made to the manual.