Merge Conflict, In Writing

Combine two diverging versions of the same document, then justify every decision. The rationale is the deliverable, not the merged file

Due: 16 April 2027 · Weight: 30%

Set in week 7. Due 5pm Friday of week 8.

The brief#

Two versions of one document. Both sets of edits are legitimate. Produce one document, and account for every decision you made to get there.

Download the file package: a source document and two revisions of it, made independently. Most of the edits do not overlap and combining them is arithmetic. A few touch the same passage in incompatible ways. Those are the assessment.

The rationale is the deliverable. A mechanically correct merge submitted without one does not meet the brief, and will be marked as though the rationale were absent, because it is. This is not a formality: the merged file records what survived and nothing about why, which is precisely the property week 7 identifies as the reason a resolved merge looks like text that was never contested. Writing the rationale is what puts the discarded version and the reason back into the record.

For each conflict, state which version you kept, what you cut, and the ground. Classify it: mechanical where the two edits are compatible and the conflict is an artefact of how the comparison was done, substantive where the two versions make different claims and only one can stand. Expect at least one where both sides are defensible. Those are the ones worth your words: say why you chose as you did, and what a reader loses by that choice.

Do not resolve a substantive conflict by keeping both. Two incompatible claims left side by side in one document is not a merge; it is the conflict, undecided, with the markers deleted.

What you submit#

Two files: the merged document, and the rationale. The rationale should be readable on its own: for each conflict, quote or locate the passage, give both versions, state the decision and the ground. Length follows the number of real conflicts, not a word count.

The week 7 lab requires a stated reason for each resolution before it will accept one, and produces the merge and the rationale as two separate things. The reasons it collects are the same reasons this assessment asks you to write down, on a smaller document.