MPH 599 Week 8 Revision Memo Example

Memorandum

To: Course instructor

From: MPH student

Date: June 20, 2027

Re: Revision memo for the grade card paper and the term's three writing patterns

Summary

This memo reports how the three patterns identified in my week 2 baseline changed by the final draft of my short scholarly paper on restaurant grade cards. I measured each pattern with the same definitions I used at baseline and report counts per 100 words. Two patterns cleared almost entirely; one did not. The revised paper is attached with tracked changes visible, so each example below can be checked against its strikethrough and insertion.

Patterns, Not Pages

Table 1

Pattern Rates From Baseline to Final Paper

Note. Note. Baseline from a 270-word inspection memo; paper counts from the full 1,520-word text, marked with the same definitions.

Before and After, Shown in Full

Pattern A, cleared. First draft: "It was observed in the Tennessee data that outbreak restaurants did not score lower." Final: "Jones et al. (2004) found that restaurants linked to outbreaks had the same average scores as others." The researchers are now the subject, and the finding is the verb's object.

Pattern C, nearly cleared. First draft: "An increase in the probability of A-range scoring was demonstrated following grading implementation." Final: "By the third year of grading, an A-range score had become 35% more likely." The actions, scoring and beginning, are verbs again (Wong et al., 2015).

Pattern B, not cleared. First draft: "restaurant hygiene grade card posting requirement." Final: "a requirement to post hygiene grades." That example cleared, but 14 noun stacks remain in the final paper, many in technical phrases such as "foodborne disease hospitalization data."

Counts Rather Than Claims

In the final paper, I found no hidden observer frames, 14 noun stacks and 6 buried actions in 1,520 words. A classmate checked two sections with the same definitions and found one more noun stack than I did, which suggests the counts are close but slightly low.

The Pattern That Did Not Clear

Noun stacks fell by about 60% but did not clear. Many of the remaining stacks are terms of art: "foodborne disease hospitalizations" and "inspection score data" are the names researchers use, and unpacking them would make sentences longer without making them clearer. Others are habits, such as "grade card posting program," which could be "the program that posts grade cards." Williams and Bizup (2017) note that some nominalizations name concepts readers already know and need not be unpacked, which explains why the pattern resists complete removal. I will set a new rule for next term: unpack any stack of three nouns unless it is a term used the same way in at least two of my sources.

What Changed in How I Work

The biggest change was not in editing but in drafting. In week 2 I could not see these patterns until I counted them. By the final paper, I noticed most hidden observer frames as I wrote them. Buried actions still appeared in first drafts but were easy to find with a search for "was" followed by a noun ending in "-tion." Noun stacks remain hard to see, because they look like ordinary technical language.

Tracked Changes Are the Evidence

The attached revision shows 47 tracked changes, of which 31 address the three patterns and 16 address citation, heading levels and number style. Each example above can be found by searching the tracked changes for the quoted phrase. The style manual governed the heading and number changes (American Psychological Association, 2020).

Next Check

I will repeat the count on my first paper next term, using the same definitions and the new rule for noun stacks, and report the three rates again. If the noun-stack rate stays above 0.5 per 100 words after the new rule, I will ask the writing center to review one section with me, since a habit that survives a term of counting may need a second reader to see.

Feedback That Shaped the Revision

Two comments from peer review changed the revision. One classmate marked a paragraph in which I had removed every passive verb, including one where the actor was unknown and the passive was the right choice; I restored it. Another noted that my first draft used "letter grades," "grade cards" and "posted grades" for the same thing; the final paper uses "posted grades" except when describing a specific city's program by its own name. Both changes are outside the three patterns, but they show that clearing a habit can overshoot, which is why the next term's rule allows exceptions.

References

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Jones, T. F., Pavlin, B. I., LaFleur, B. J., Ingram, L. A., & Schaffner, W. (2004). Restaurant inspection scores and foodborne disease. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 10(4), 688-692. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid1004.030343

Williams, J. M., & Bizup, J. (2017). Style: Lessons in clarity and grace (12th ed.). Pearson.

Wong, M. R., McKelvey, W., Ito, K., Schiff, C., Jacobson, J. B., & Kass, D. (2015). Impact of a letter-grade program on restaurant sanitary conditions and diner behavior in New York City. American Journal of Public Health, 105(3), e81-e87. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302404