Analyze an argument
The following appreared in ma memorandum from the owner of the Juniper Cafe, a small, local offe shop in the downtown area of a small american city:
"We must reduce overhead here at the cafe. Instead of opening at 6 a.m. weekdays, we will now open at 8 a.m. On weekends, we will only open from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. The decrease in hours of operations will help save money because we wont be paying for utility bills, employee wages, or other operating costs during the hours we are closed. This is the best strategy for us to save money and remain in business
In this memorandum, the owner of the café shop is explaining to his patrons that in order to keep is business viable he is forced to decrease its opening hours. The assumptions the owner is making seems at first logical. However his radical changes are not supported by enough coherent facts, thus leaving the …. With a lot of question marks.
The first change the owner is talking about is to open at 8am instead of 6am during weekdays. To make this assumption more valuable, he should have explain with facts. For example is it the holiday season thus far less people go to work, town’s inhabitants go on holiday etc…? Is it a tourist city during most time of the year, expect that specific period, where people go early to tourists attractions etc…?
Besides, the second assumptions is about reducing the hours on weekend, being open only from 9am to 4pm on weekend, there isn’t any indications of the normal weekend working hours. Once again, this assumptions isn’t supported by enough fact to make it convincing. What was the normal weekend hour? Do town’s people frequent less the café on weekends?
Foremore, the owner assumes that reducing the working hours will save him costs on utilities, salaries and other operating costs. It sounds like a fair assessment but the owner is almost highlighting that he is poorly managing his money, or poorly managing his people. Maybe he really need to laid of one of the worker because there isn’t enough work, he is maybe not making enough profit, is mortgage is too expensive etc…
Instead of unprofesionaly explaining, by blaming all the costs owning a business, why he need to reduce the business hours of his coffee shop, the owner should have blame it on the tough economy that everybody has been experiencing lately and been under pressure by.
Sentence: Once again, this assumptions isn't supported by enough fact to make it convincing.
Description: A determiner/pronoun, singular is not usually followed by a noun, plural, common
Suggestion: Refer to this and assumptions
Sentence: Instead of unprofesionaly explaining, by blaming all the costs owning a business, why he need to reduce the business hours of his coffee shop, the owner should have blame it on the tough economy that everybody has been experiencing lately and been under pressure by.
Description: A verb 'to have', uninflected present tense, infinitive or is not usually followed by a verb, base: uninflected present, imperative or infinitive
Suggestion: Refer to have and blame
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 312 350
No. of Characters: 1444 1500
No. of Different Words: 173 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.203 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.628 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.45 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 103 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 67 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 41 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 21 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.368 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.438 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.307 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.555 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.106 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5