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 4: Combining Parallelism and Concision

Your Goals

1. make related parts of the text consistent

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

Comments on Response Options

Problem Text

This devise gem is the gem responsible for user authentication and functions related to that. It is rack-based and is used well with Rails application software.

Option A

“is responsible for user authentication and related functions. It is rack-based and compatible with Rails application software.”

This option consistently describes this gem using related description words “rack-based” and “compatible.” It also cuts out repeated information such as “the gem[gem is the gem]” and implied information such as “related to that [functions related to that].” Replacing “used well” with “compatible” mentioned previously, also cuts out unnecessary information.

Option B

“is responsible for user authentication and related functions. It is rack-based and works with Rails application software.”

This option, like the one above, cuts out repeated information such as “the gem [gem is the gem]” and implied information such as “related to that [functions related to that].” But, this option does not consistently describe this gem because it uses a description word, “rack-based” and the action word, “works” instead of using consistent description or action words.

Option C

“is the one responsible for user authentication and related functions. It is rack-based and a compatible partner with Rails application software.”

This option, like the one above, does not consistently describe the gem because it uses a description word, “rack-based” and a thing, “partner,” instead of using consistent description words or action words. This option also adds implied information such as “the one [gem is the one].” Also, adding “a compatible partner” after the description word as previously mentioned, is less concise than adding another description word like “compatible.”