For this post on editing, you are commenting back, so you do not need to create a new post yourself. Questions to think with:
*What does it mean to "edit" and where do you edit/what do you edit?
*What are some principles of editing that you believe in and use yourself?
*Does genre and/or audience affect how you edit?
*How is editing different/similar to revising?
*How does editing enhance your theory of composing?
I want you to connect your responses to the above questions and two other things:
(1) the readings you have done for the editing section (Fleckenstein, Sommers, Sullivan and Eggleston) AND the mini assignment you did in class on Thursday. So, think about the readings and think about how you went about completing the mini assignment: what did you learn from doing both; what can you take forward with you from both; draw connections between the readings, the mini assignment, and yourself as an editor.
Per normal--please engage in a dialogue and your responses should be thoughtful and informed.
In the past week, I’ve realized that “editing” is much more than it appears. When I see a draft of an essay, I assume that once it reaches the hands of the editor, the only thing left to do is fix grammatical errors and possibly rearrange a few sentences. After having read the articles by Sommers, Sullivan, and Fleckenstein, I now know that the editor’s job is severely more extensive.
ReplyDeleteThe whole purpose of editing is to make a draft of a written work such as an essay, a newsletter, a magazine article, etc. concise and meaningful. I’ve always prided myself on my grammatical skills. Grammar rules were ingrained in my brain from a young age (I blame my 7th grade teacher) and so whenever a friend needed someone to edit their essay I was always the first to volunteer. Apparently, I’ve been making the same mistakes as most teachers I know, fixing grammar while writing side comments about fleshing out arguments. As a student, I should have known that this was confusing my friends, and yet I gave both grammatical advice as well as constructive advice. Now I know better.
In class, we were given an article for GQ to edit, and let me tell you, that was one long article. After the failure of trying to edit/revise the article in class, I went back home and tried it again. The second time around went much smoother, and showed me that editing was not only changing grammar and fixing mistakes, but making decisions to revise and take out subjects that had no relevance to the article. By the time I finished, the seven page article was only three pages. That tells me more than anything that editing involves a lot of revising.
For editing the article on GQ, I also noticed how important editing for an audience was. The audience’s perspective, trying to imagine what they would want to read, was vital while revising. One has to consider every aspect before taking pen to paper, as well as what the author herself wants to say.
My theory of composing usually goes as follows: read the prompt, stress over what to say, think about my point, write. After learning all about rhetorical situation (thanks to Bitzer) and the different techniques that go into revising and editing, my composition process has changed entirely (at least in theory). A writer is her own editor, and must understand the reasons behind writing. The more you understand the writing process and rhetorical knowledge, the more you see when editing. It is my belief that writers must learn the basis of rhetorical knowledge in order to write and editors must understand the reason for editing, but many of them do not. The articles we read demonstrate how editing and revision shape a written work and how, as an editor, we are meant to assist others in their writing process while shaping our own writing.
I’ve had a lot of experience editing in the past year. Before I got the opportunity to work with the Scroll, Scribe & Screen newsletter, my thoughts on editing started and ended with grammar and punctuation revision. Now, I know that it’s a lot more than that. I think to “edit” means to work on a piece of writing correcting errors, organization, facts, and details (like grammar). Like Sarah said, the editing process is very extensive. This is like in Sommers’ essay, when she’s explaining how teachers can steer students wrong by focusing too much on little details than on the content of the piece as a whole. Moreover, that practice can hinder students’ development as writers, as they end up composing something according to their teacher’s biased judgment than their own.
ReplyDeleteOne principle in editing that I believe in, though it can be very tedious, is reading the piece at least twice before actually touching it. This is really hard to do when you’re constantly catching errors since all you want to do is start marking that paper up. But reading the piece means having an understanding of what you are working with, and when you understand the piece, it’s easier to work on the entire thing than to start picking on little things like commas or periods. This helps avoid some of the problems with editing that Sommers mentions: looking at the whole composition and its content is more important than just finding little errors.
I definitely think that the intended audience affects the way you edit. I saw this in the mini assignment that we did in class the other day (which I really enjoyed), like Sarah mentioned. Obviously the time period was short so I only got a chance to read the piece once, but I was at least able to get a feel for it. One of the things my group did to edit the piece for GQ magazine was cut out chunks of scholarly sentences throughout the whole article. We knew that our article had to be smart, but the overload of technical rhetoric terms and scholars made the article read more like something you would find on JSTOR than in GQ.
I think revising is an important part of the editing process, but it’s just that: a part. To me, revision means reading something through for mistakes or errors. It’s what I’ll do when I’m done writing this blog post: I’ll read it over and correct anything that reads wrong or is just mistyped. As opposed to what I would do if I was thoroughly editing this post (I’d read it over and make sure that all ideas are developed well and that I have the audience in mind, etc.). Revision is one of the last steps in the editing process because it comes after a piece is thoroughly editing (reorganized, maybe rewritten, facts checked and everything mostly finalized). Revision happens when a piece is almost ready for publication. If we would have had more time for the in-class assignment, I would have revised the draft after we took out the scholarly paragraphs and corrected the obvious errors.
Editing is a huge part of my theory of composing because it’s vital to any piece of writing. A paper or article is never done unless it has been edited, and usually more than one time. This is shown in the Fleckenstein reading about coherence. She says, “…coherent meaning results from the relationships we as readers build between ideas-if we can't build relationships by bridging the gaps between ideas-ideas such as crab grass and fans, we create no coherent sense of the text.” Composing an articulate piece takes a lot of work, and editing helps to refine the piece into its best possible shape with the most clarity. Plus, editing gives us a chance to bridge gaps that we might not notice when we’re writing the piece.
Like Sarah, when I would hear the word “edit” or “editor” I would think of someone who would just go through your paper and fix any mechanical errors that appeared in the work. Pretty much, the job of Word spell check, but after reading all of the readings, I’ve come to realize that editing is much more than just fixing the mechanical errors, it also involves enhancing the work not only for the sake of it, but for the audience as well. Personally, I would always add any criticism I had on the margins of the lines, but I never thought of it as a key component in editing as I do now. I definitely believe audience and genre affects how you edit a piece. Not only is this seen throughout the readings, but also with the mini assignment we did on Thursday. Editing that article (which looked more like a research paper than an article) for GQ, was definitely a challenge, and not only editing it for the audience of GQ but also for the genre of an article influenced the amount of editing that was put into the work. Not only did we have to revise the mistakes made (and the fact checking) but also remove any parts that did not make sense, or were too lengthy. Audience also comes into play in terms of coherence in writing because you have to make sure that your sentences are running smoothly and making sense for your reader. This is also included in the editing process because as an editor and as a writer, it is your job to make sure the audience knows exactly what the message you are trying to convey is. I suppose this is when you can say that the similarities and differences between revising get blurred. Editing is more of the checking coherence, enhancing the work, and adding or deleting anything that doesn’t make sense for the audience or genre, while revising is more of the grammatical errors type of work. I think this enhances my theory of composing because I definitely need to be aware of coherence in my writing and the editing process for when others or I edit my papers. Also, the example given in the Fleckenstein reading about the girl who edited her own paper was kind of an example of how it ties into my theory of composing, because she was able to do both the editing and revising for her own work when someone else wasn’t around, and I feel like most of the time that would be the case for me.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I’ve been an editor for forever. Starting in high school I’ve been asked by friends and family to “please look over and revise” various research papers, college essays, e-mails, brochures and the like. This has never particularly bothered me because writing is what I’m good at and I like helping people out (and usually I got something in return, like help with math). When it came to helping people with their papers, though, while they more or less asked me to just look over their grammar and punctuation I usually did a full scale editing job. To me, a full scale(ish) editing job is looking closely at the paper and seeing how to improve it: how to make the paper flow, looking at transitions, making sure the language is appropriate for the audience and so on. Yes, editing includes grammar and punctuation but it’s certainly not limited to the two.
ReplyDeleteI like Alex’s statement concerning the Sommer’s article and her belief that sometimes teachers can hinder student’s development by focusing too much on little details. Particularly for people who don’t necessarily enjoy writing and composing for classes, it gets very frustrating when each teacher/instructor/professor looks for something different in writing assignments. It can be very hard for them to understand that there is no set formula with writing: a + b does not necessarily equal a great paper, but it’s important to consider the different factors. The editing process more or less determines how well the factors work together to create the argument for the particular piece of writing and what needs to be changed to make the argument stronger.
As a writer and having written for several publications in the past, I think that the audience is one of the very first things that the writer should think about when composing some kind of written work. I also worked with Alex on Scribe, Scroll & Screen, where our audience was Florida State alumni, prospective students, English Department faculty and current English majors. We worked to have all the articles be professional, informative but still interesting and fun to read. We also worked with a given audience on our mini-assignment on Thursday. Knowing the audience helped us out immensely when it came down to the editing and revisions.
Which leads me to the next part: I think that revision and editing are very closely linked. When I’m reivisoning a piece it’s usually a piece I’ve walked away from for a certain period of time and then am re-reading. I may re-arrange some things, take out whole paragraphs and re-write others—really whatever I think is necessary in order to make the paper a better one. Editing, then, gets down into the nitty-gritty aspects: making sure the paper as a whole flowers consistently from point to point, making sure that there are not any awkward sentences, making sure spelling, grammar and punctuation are correct. Editing is kind of the final go through (or go through’s) necessary in order to make a paper as perfect as it can be. In my composing process, I’d have to agree with Giselle in saying that editing is something I more or less do myself with my own works. Every so often I’ll have someone else take a look at it but for the most part it’s something that I’ve had enough practice with to be able to do a good job without any help.
Before this section of the course I felt that I had a good grasp of what editing meant. And, like Sarah, as a grammar junkie and the go-to proofreader-of-papers in my group of friends, I also felt like I was pretty good at editing. However, after completing the readings by Sommers, Fleckenstein, Sullivan and Eggleston I realized that my ideas about what editing was were definitely lacking! The article “Before You Begin” was especially helpful in developing my understanding of what editing really means. I had never thought about editorial levels or having to consider things like audience, the amount of time you have to spend editing a piece, format, etc. I came to realize that editing is a lot more than simply scanning for grammatical errors and involves creativity and pre-planning, just like composing does.
ReplyDeleteAfter the readings and the in-class editing exercise I would define editing as not only correcting mistakes in writing, but also making subjective decisions about style, flow and clarity and making changes to produce the best final product under unique circumstances. I served as the Copy Editor for the in-class editing assignment. Since I was working under such a tight deadline, I had to make decisions to cut out entire chunks of text in order to allow for the best final product. I had to surmise what I thought the main message of the article was and go from there. What started out as a 15 page (and rather poorly written) research paper became a 3 page article for GQ. While I did have to correct grammar and mechanics, my main focus was making the article clear and making sure that it flowed well and supported its main points. The whole process was a lot more work than I ever would have imagined an editor put into his/her editing projects.
In regards to editing vs. revising, I agree with Alex when she said that while revising is an important part of editing, it is JUST a part and that there is much more to editing than revising. Revising should be the final step in editing and involve correcting basic errors. Editing raises questions about whether the piece is reaching the people it is supposed to reach, is pleasing to read, is stylistic, etc. Revising leaves the content of the paper basically the same but changes mechanics, while editing leaves the message/meaning of the paper the same and can make changes to content if necessary.
Editing should be a major step in every writer’s theory of composing and it should go beyond simply revising. A good writer should stretch his work to its very end and make sure that it is written in the best possible way. A practical way I think I will try to apply this to my own theory of composing is to always be sure to seek feedback from multiple people on my writing. I can ask them to not just proofread my work but to also provide ideas on how I can make the content better.
Until this point I have never thought of editing as a creative process, but it’s not the first and definitely not the last time I will be proven wrong :-)
Trust your own judgment. Kristie Fleckenstein encourages writers to step away from the conventional approach to writing. If I’ve learned anything in the past few weeks, it’s that process > product. Even the form or style of your writing is something that develops during the composition process. Editing and revision are both very important parts of this process, although they seem to serve different purposes.
ReplyDeleteAlissa mentions that she thinks editing is “making a paper flow.” Not to be too technical, but I actually think that is the purpose of revision, not editing. After the various readings we’ve done on editing, and also my research for my keyword project, I’ve got a completely different view on editing and revision. I’ve come to realize the distinction between the two, and how they apply to writing as a process. “Editing,” to me, is altering a work at its face value. You look for mistakes, and you fix them. It’s punctuation, sentence structure, grammar, and spelling. All of these concepts adhere to very specific rules, and there’s a clear distinction between what is right and wrong. “Revision,” on the other hand, is a different form of post-writing. After reading Fleckenstein’s article, I’m left with the impression that the purpose of revising a work is to rearrange, add, or delete. Revision is meant to improve coherence of the work as a WHOLE. While editing improves the coherence of each sentence individually, revision takes into account the meaning of the whole.
Genre and audience are always an important part of writing, so it should obviously be kept in mind during the editing or revision process. While you’re editing a piece of writing, you should always consider the audience. Will they understand the grammar being used? Is the sentence structure or content too complex, or too simple? will your audience need further explanation of an idea?
This new understanding of mine is starting to shine light on the problems we had on Thursday with that mini-project. The “writing” (if you can call it that) we had in front of us was really something else. After reading the first few sentences, I realized it was in desperate need for some line editing. Simultaneously, I realized that it seemed to make no sense to me whatsoever. I was unsure of what the paper was really about (the American Dream or American Gangster?), and I still don’t know. I realize now that this was because there was no coherent meaning amongst all the ideas. Because I wasn’t sure of what to expect, it was hard to relate all the minor points back to one idea. As a reader, I couldn’t build the relationships to bridge the ideas. As a result, my group had a really hard time editing/revising the document. We couldn’t figure out what to cut out, what sentences to move where… it was pretty much a clusterfuck (for lack of a better word).
Overall, I think it’s pretty fair to say that revision and editing are separate factions of post-writing. Editing is completely necessary to maintain coherence within each separate idea or sentence. Revision, on the other hand, works mainly to ensure that the reader can find coherent meaning in the work as a whole. Whatever way you choose to look at it, editing/revision can be a huge influence on your composition. When I am put into the position to edit another piece of writing, I always consider how it may be like or unlike my own work. I’ve always been a firm believer in learning from your mistakes, but sometimes it’s better to learn from the mistakes of others.
Everyone has their own definition of the word edit. To me though it is the taking of someone else’s work, reading through it and giving the author your feedback whether written or spoken. It’s more in depth than the checking of grammar and spelling, it’s more focused on the content and how it’s presented to the audience. You edit wherever the material presents itself; on the computer, on a piece of paper, etc. You edit written works that are presented to you. I cut this down just to written works because even though you can edit a drawing or picture that is not what is relevant for this class.
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple principles of editing that I believe in and use myself. One of the main ones is one that I agree with Alex about; to edit properly you need to read the piece that you edit more than once to make sure that you understand exactly what the author is trying to convey. I myself will read something at least twice before I make a mark on the page. Another principle that I believe in is always remember the audience. You need to make sure while you are writing or editing that you always keep the target audience in mind.
Genre and audience are a big part of editing. You cannot edit something unless you know what the genre is and the audience its intended for. The genre determines the audience. Certain types of people like certain genre types. When you edit a body of work you are trying to make it attractive to a type of audience. If the target audience of the piece is 5yr old children and the author wrote with more complicated words than the target audience is liable to understand then you edit it to make it more easily applicable to your audience.
Editing is both similar and different than revising. For revising you just read through something once and then go back and fix the grammatical and spelling errors. For editing you fix grammar and spelling too but you also do so much more. In editing you read a piece several times to absorb the authors style and to make sure you know exactly what the message is, and who the audience is. Then you go back and make suggestions to adjust the paper to fit the audience better. In editing you change up the language. You also rewrite the sentences to make the message clearer and the you can out in suggestions for more details or to take out some details. An editor also mentions when they think that something needs to be explained better or when they think another scene needs to be added or one when one that is already there needs to change. So all in all there are some similarities between revising and editing it’s just that the differences far outweigh the similarities.
When you edit someone’s work you can start to see correlations between your own writing and that of someone else’s. After editing multiple peoples work you will start to see some of the problems with your own work. You are more likely to spot them and have an idea of how to fix them. It will also help when you are starting something new you will keep in mind that which you have spotted in others work to keep from making the same mistake. All in all the experience you gain in editing will impact your work generally leading to rapid improvement.
If there’s one thing I know in my waking life, it’s that making you’re thoughts/feelings/words relatable to someone else is one the hardest things to do. After the readings for Sommers, Sullivan, and Fleckenstein, I now I have a more firm understanding on how best to accomplish this through composition editing. Fleckenstein was most helpful to my understanding of editing. I especially liked the examples she used. When she mentioned the writing and editing process between the three students in her article, I realized that editing is essentially a way to make something more clear and precise. As others in the class had mentioned, some initial thoughts on editing involve grammar and punctuation mostly, and these readings have been real eye-openers. I am starting to appreciate how everything is starting to build on top of each other in this class. As Sara mentioned, when you have a better understanding of rhetorical knowledge, your mind is more open to things that it wouldn’t normally see when editing. Incorporating this new knowledge on editing, including the introduction to the symbolism with the editing and proofreading, is as others have mentioned, no easy task. Alissa said it best, “It can be very hard for them to understand that there is no set formula with writing: a + b does not necessarily equal a great paper, but it’s important to consider the different factors.” My first experience with hand on editing in the classroom was similar to many others; exciting and a bit overwhelming. Not only the length of the GQ article but the time constraints that were also involved. I myself, was off to a late start. I agree with Alex that given the context, it was a little strange that it initially read like something you would find on JSTOR. One of the most difficult tasks given the amount of time for revision with this article was cutting out those ‘chunks’ of scholarly sounding sentences and then revising them. It didn’t make sense to overload the article with technical information, given the context about gangster movies. I kind of wished that I was able to work with some of the other things with editing the article as I was noticing the work my other classmates were doing such as with editing pictures, but something tells me that I will get that chance at a later time. The text seemed the most challenging to revise, but I look forward to seeing what editing the pictures and non-text elements entails. Getting familiar with the symbolism will probably be my greatest challenge, as I feel that I am already a critical thinker, and revising should be less difficult for me. This is my hope. Although this first experience with editing was a little daunting, I am ready to rise to the challenge and now that my understanding of editing has successfully been broadened, I look forward to the upcoming projects in which I will be applying these skills.
ReplyDeleteNever did I think I would be so heavily expanding my view of editing. Even with an aunt that works as an editor for the University of Chicago Free Press, I thought editing was the simple thing I had learned thus far with the funny symbols in paragraphs and margins that came from the classic style guides like MLA and APA. I could not have been more wrong. Editing is multifaceted. The readings, especially Fleckenstein, reveal that editing is revision and understanding and not just blasé marking through a document or paper.
ReplyDeleteThinking about it in depth, almost anything can be edited. If almost anything can be remediated, even the self, then the transition requires one to look at it from an editing perspective. Sarah was the first one to mention the example of the remediation of Harry Potter a few weeks ago. Well, if we look at the remediation of Harry Potter from the perspective of an editor we see that each step has to be edited and redone in order to reach a complete, coherent and acceptable finished product.
When Harry Potter was published as a book, it obviously underwent the editing process. It is easy then to assume that the transition to movie underwent the editing process as well. Yet, this time it happened in multiple forums because the remediation included a screenplay and the actual film footage. Let’s take it one more step. Someone with a background in architecture and the mechanics of the inner workings of theme park attractions and buildings needed to look over the plans for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in order to assure they were within the special constraints, met safety codes, and were appropriate to the audience. Everything can be edited.
With the last facet of the aforementioned editing process in mind, let’s change focus to audience. Like Sarah and Alex both mentioned, the intended audience definitely affects the manner in which you edit. Look at the majority of Disney movies. Believe it or not Disney makes death age appropriate. With the exception of, perhaps, Mufasa, most Disney related deaths are either peaceful or not shown on camera.Of course, Mufasa’s death was based off of that of Hamlet’s father from Shakespear’s Hamlet, so making that age appropriate would take a lot of work. However, when reviewing and editing a piece, if the voice is not appropriate for the audience, the editor will call the writer out on this and suggest changes or retroactively revise the piece right there.
Enter the arena now and get ready for the head to head battle of editing versus revision. I agree with Sammi when she says that revision is a part of editing, but it should not be the last step in the singular sense. Revision should occur multiple times and achieve the most acceptable product possible. Unfortunately, with the mini assignment from Thursday, editing was rushed within the small time constraint, but even the expedited editing included revision.
From that experience, I can take away knowing parts of the structure of editing as a group. Every person played a role whether is was great or small. While one was reading and changing parts of the document, others were manipulating images or picking a suitable format for the GQ audience. I learned that steps are important.
My personal theory of composing has changed yet again. I do not think my theory of composing will ever stay the same for more than a month at the rate I’m going. With my usual rushed attitude in mind, I now look at what I’m saying. I have hit the delete button on my lovely macbook’s keyboard more for this blog than any of the others. Complete sentences have been erased or the order of words has changed so that the thoughts are more neatly organized. Editing is now part of my composing process. It will be amazing if I ever get anything completed again.
Similarly to Sarah and pretty much everyone else, I always saw editing as fixing grammar and eliminating such childish errors as run-ons and punctuations. Now I realize it is so much more than that. Like Sarah, my teachers – and parents – instilled in me what I considered to be a good understanding of grammar rules. In school, I was the go-to-guy for editing papers and writer’s block relief. I always edited the typical research paper/essay, and I have often found myself rewording billboard ads and TV commercials/shows to make the grammar and speech less awkward, or, more commonly, less of a kindergarten writing level.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the Sommers, Fleckenstein, Sullivan and Eggleston articles, I realize, just like my colleagues, that I would tell my peers to edit their grammar and wordiness, while telling them to expand on ideas at the same time, confusing them just as my teachers were confusing me. I have always believed in being elaborative while still concise. A conundrum, I know. I just never knew how to give comments and advice to a helpful effect. Now I see my mistakes.
I’m a firm believer in audience awareness, and I firmly agree with Sarah, Alex, DJ, etc. I especially enjoyed DJ’s comment about the age-appropriateness of death in Disney movies. Snaps for DJ! In writing my research paper’s for school, I write to an audience who has a basic knowledge of what I’m talking about, not one for which I must dumb myself down. This was a major issue in the GQ mini assignment. The “author” seemed to have no idea of their audience. They were writing a somewhat scholarly journal article for a bunch of men who want to know how to dress well, live well, and sex well. As a GQ reader myself, *wink, wink* I was appalled at the idea that this was considered to be GQ-acceptable. I would like to believe that Jim Nelson would have thrown this back at the author with a Miranda-Priestly-esque pursing of the lips. There was too much rhetorical theory and not enough movie analysis. An article that could have been three, MAYBE four, pages was drawn out to an unthinkably dull and dreadful seven. Add the pictures and pull-out quotes, and you’re in for a drop in circulation.
Not only did the article (and many peer papers I’ve “edited”) need to be edited for grammar and whatnot, it needed to go through a heavy-handed revision. The editor needed to be sure the writer knew the audience, as well as the subject. The writer needed to make themselves aware of these things, and tone down their more-rhetorical-than-thou attitude in the piece.
Because of these articles and the assignment, I have (yet again) added to and revised my own theory of composing. I liked Fleckenstein’s idea of continuously shortening one’s piece while still getting the idea across effectively. It is definitely something which I try to do in my own writing, especially when I constantly go over the maximum word limit and have to go through my papers three times before I’m anywhere close to getting under the bar. I agree with Jenna on the point that revision focuses on a work as a whole, but I don’t think editing is just about singular sentences. It’s about entire pages, paragraphs, sentences, words, letters, symbols… Must I go on?
Well, here I am talking about being concise, but all I seem to be getting out of my mind is elaboration. Feel free to edit and revise, Kara. I know it’s needed! These articles and assignments have opened my eyes to things I noticed in the past, but never gave much attention to, or maybe never really noticed to begin with. I’m interested to see what changes I can bring to my work when I put these theories into practice.
I have to agree with a lot of the previous posts that editing doesn’t simply mean to check for grammatical errors. Before the readings I thought that the main job of an editor was to make sure that the ideas were coherent and that there were no grammatical errors (much like the teachers who commented only on the correct usage of punctuation or diction in students’ papers), but after reading the articles and our in-class assignment I can see that editing is a much more involved process.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think that we edit on a daily basis. Not just in our class work but also in everyday conversation. I know that many people (myself included) think about what they’re going to say before they say it and even after. I think about how I could have said something better, or if I don’t get the reaction I expect what I might have said wrong. Even though the audience consists only of myself, I still see this as a form of editing. Another form of editing that I think all of us do on a daily basis involves text messages. We read our texts over to make sure that we’re sending the right message, that it’s suitable for the medium and will be understood by the person we’re sending it to.
I think we all saw in the mini assignment that genre and audience greatly affect how we edit. Alex mentioned that the piece we were given to edit read more like an article from JSTOR than something GQ readers would be interested in, and I completely agree. Right away my group had to cut out chunks of purely scholarly material that would bore pretty much anyone who picked up the magazine. I think that the obituaries that we edited also show how much an audience can affect how you organize or revise a work. Simply by changing the audience from adult readers to high schoolers I had to change or remove a lot of the ideas because the new audience most likely wouldn’t know what the obituary was talking about.
Sammi said that “revising leaves the content of the paper basically the same but changes mechanics”. I think that this is a great and effective definition of revising. After doing the readings I would consider revising to be a task much like proofreading. A few of the comments said that it is usually left until the end of the writing process. Yet, I think that many of us revise during and after we write. For instance, I’ve gone back and changed some of my sentences in this blog already and I haven’t finished composing it yet. Editing, I think, is a much more involved process saved generally until you finish writing a draft. It concerns organization, coherency, style, syntax, diction, and also touches on revision. From the mini assignment I learned that editing also involves the effective incorporation of images and text like quotes etc and that almost as much work goes into making them flow into the work as making the work flow itself.
I think that editing enhances my theory of composing because it is a tool that I can use to further develop the coherency and effectiveness of my arguments. Before the readings and the mini assignment I might read a draft or final draft once to make sure it made sense and run it through my spell checker, but after the readings I can take away techniques to help myself develop my writing and make sure that I’m getting my ideas across exactly the way that I want to.
Editing is something I always had a pretty firm grasp of. After last class though, my thoughts changed. I knew that there were many jobs to editing, but for some reason I had been blessed with shorter articles and more subject striking material for my liking than what was given to us. Nonetheless, we still did what we had to do. I thought the mini assignment in class was a perfect example of both editing and revising, because I do feel they go hand in hand- but they are not the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the first step to editing is revision. After reading the article in its entirety, I did not have any one correction in my head for a set phrase or sentence, which would come in closer readings and more readings. After the first read, I had revisions in mind: key parts that needed to change or be replaced in general, major issues in writing, or a major error in a fact. I completely agree with Jenna: that the purpose of revising is to add delete, and rearrange. The fact that Jenna believes revising is related to the work as a whole and not individual piece complies exactly with my interpretation of revision, as well as Fleckenstein’s impact on my opinion.
For me with editing, the process takes a while. It’s about reading, re-reading, and re-reading what I have already re-read. After I feel like I have mastered the piece, I usually wait a day and look it over after having slept. That way I have fresh eyes and can usually point out a few things more that make no sense.
In relation to audience and genre, I feel that editing has everything to do with it. When editing a piece, the audience is in my opinion, the sole reason that we edit. There are phrases that appeal to one category of an audience more than another, and phrases that are more appropriate to one audience than another. When you edit, the audience must always be kept in mind. This is something that I had a personal experience with when I was interning at a magazine my senior year in high school. I realize it more now looking back than I did then, but my mentor (the editor of the magazine) gave me a different article to write, as well as a different audience each time. It varied between an audience of a familiar category such as women or teens, to categories that I was completely unknowledgeable of. This brings up a new part of editing: researching, and accuracy. With unfamiliar audiences, facts and pieces of the article may have to be researched to be obtained, and the accuracy is a major part of editing as well.
Editing is a process. It is a process that takes time, creativity, and patience to be successful. Editing takes a good eye, and proves that reading a piece over once just doe not cut it. I am learning more and more through this course that although I had experience with some editing before, practice makes perfect and it can take years to perfect the art of editing.
Editing to me is making your work the best it can possibly be, through whatever means you need to make sure your paper is perceived as you intend it to be. After I write a paper, letter, or anything for school, I lay in my bed and read through it twice before I go to make a hard copy. I also e-mail it to my boyfriend or my dad to get anothers perspective to make sure what I wrote makes sense. Time after time, as I am watching my papers and projects creep out of the printer, one line at a time and I always notice an error I didn’t see before. I then read through the hard copy, and then print another hard copy.
ReplyDeleteTo most people, they check only spelling and capitalization and think a paper is edited. When I edit, I only edit for punctuation and spelling. I rely on a friend or family member to read what I wrote out loud to me, to see how it sounds being read from another person’s perspective other than my own. This allows me for the re-wording portion of my editing process. I also use the five cannons of rhetoric as a checklist to make sure my paper contains each of those qualities.
Genre and audience absolutely effect how I edit. Audience has the most effect on me as far as the language I use. For example, for my keyword project I began talking about how arrangement is one of the five cannons of rhetoric. Upon having my father reading my newsletter over my phone- he had no idea what rhetoric and the five cannons were. I then thought to myself, of course not one freshman knows what rhetoric is, and the five cannons? It was obvious I had to go back in my newsletter and further explain what rhetoric was.
Editing is about the actual words themselves and how they come together. Revision is more of changing the point one is trying to make, it is changing the goal of the paper. It is similar in the way that they work together in a common goal to make your final project as good as it possibly can be. I feel that editing is necessary, but revision is optional if you do it right the first time.
Editing is the last step in my theory of composing. It is the conclusion to my process and it is a step that doesn’t stop until I am proud to sign my name to my work. Within this last step, it has a few steps (like laying in bed, printing, calling dad, re-printing). This is key in my composing process because many of the things I write may be pointless without editing. It would be hard for others to understand some of the things I am saying. Editing lets me send my message to my audience in a very effective way.
The mini assignment helped me to see that there was more I could be doing to edit than I thought. There were five jobs that day, and I feel like I only really utilize three. It is important that I always check facts from my sources against other sources, as well as enhancing my photos. My job was to edit the photos and I was really pleased and surprised with how they came out.
For me editing has always been a combination of grammatical corrections and style changes, ensuring that the work flowed seamlessly from point A to K. Especially after reading the articles assigned I realize that my concept of editing was right but my follow through was not as effective as I previously thought. A style guide is something I never considered before but now I don’t know how I was so blind, it’s the perfect way to keep track of everything editing.
ReplyDeleteThe mini assignment we did in class on Tuesday just about massacred me. There wasn’t enough time to accomplish everything. One aspect, like just me editing or proofreading the article might have happened but corroborating with a group and pulling together multiple aspects all at once left my mind reeling. The fact that I struggled so much with that assignment makes me doubt my career goal of being an editor. However, with that being my first true exposure to the editing process I am going to take a deep breath and take this one step at a time.
Audience definitely affects how you edit a piece, more so in the revision process but it still plays a big role. It’s necessary to keep in mind who will be reading the finished product because while the author might know the exact meaning of aerospace engineering terms, if the intended audience does not then those should be clearly defined rather than briefly mentioned. Editing seems to be the bigger chunk of work, depending on what level of editing you are doing. Revision is the final touch-ups and smoothing out any blemishes to ensure you have the best possible finished product.
Unlike Sara and Sammie I’m probably not as much a stickler for grammar as I should be, my editing process involves more stylistic advice. I think the biggest challenge for me as an editor is keeping the authors voice intact. I tend to adapt things to the way I think they should be said or how I would say it and that is not what editing is. I need to maintain the author’s presence and just refine it slightly, my presence should be imperceptible.
A more thorough knowledge of editing has enhanced my theory of composing by making me more aware of how someone else looking at my paper might edit it and what they would change. It makes reading over my work and revising it very different. I think that to be the best editor for others I have to first be able to edit myself effectively. Now that I know how that is my endeavor.
I’ve realized that editing errors don’t really seem to stick out unless you are looking for them. Don’t get me wrong, in some cases they are quite evident and noticeable, but for the most part they seem to slip through the cracks unnoticed. This at times can be a good or a bad thing. For one it can be beneficial to the writer because it saves them from looking like an idiot, but on the contrary the errors can change the meaning of the writing intended by the writer.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I looked over my article to edit I didn’t seem to notice any errors at all, but as I began to reread the material I found that there were things that I could do that would make it more presentable. To me editing is taking something that has already been written or created and revising it to make it better from the original draft or piece. I believe that you can basically edit anything, because there will always be another way that is better or more clever to present to that particular audience. This is especially true as time passes. To me editing is much similar to remediation, in that it is taking something that is already been created and simply making it better. The more I practice editing, the more I find myself using it. For example, this blog post is making me cringe because I know that it is loaded with grammatical errors. To be honest it is so unlike me to feel that way, because I always try to get out what I’m trying to say without paying much attention to editing during my first draft.
I guess that is one principle I believe in, leave editing for last. There is no point in editing all throughout your paper in your first draft, because you may decide later on to not even use half of that material. My first advice is to write without holding back, without thinking. Then write a second draft zeroing in more on a focal point or angle of your piece. Then this is where I believe editing can make a helpful difference. By making these small changes can make a big difference in how the reader comprehends your writing.
I most definitely agree with Alex that the intended audience affects the way you edit. I’ve experienced this first hand when beginning to edit a profile I wrote about an FSU staff member. When writing the article I knew that the audience would be other staff members, alumni, students and parents. I knew that it was important to portray the staff member in the best way possible, which I paid close attention to when editing my quotes. Although you never want to be accused of misquoting, it is important not to quote someone on something that is going to make them seem uneducated. I wanted my article to appear scholarly, yet be an easy read and appealing to all of the audiences listed. Since this would be published article, I was sure to question myself and re-edit multiple times not only by myself, but to my fellow peers as well.
I believe that editing can only help your writing, and is just another important step when composing the perfect piece. It’s like the icing to the cake and pulls everything together to make your writing appear at its best and ready to read.
Sadly, I had no idea what the true meaning of the word “editing” was until I read the texts for this class. Before, like everyone else it seems, I thought editing was simply correcting grammatical errors with a red pen. It’s definitely more meaningful and lengthy than that. I completely agree with Sarah and Alex when they say that the editing process is an extensive one. Alex also said: "This is like in Sommers’ essay, when she’s explaining how teachers can steer students wrong by focusing too much on little details than on the content of the piece as a whole. Moreover, that practice can hinder students’ development as writers, as they end up composing something according to their teacher’s biased judgment than their own." With that said, editing is definitely something that takes over an entire piece. It is more than grammar and spelling, it is also about content and composition. You have to look at the piece and think about whether or not it reaches the intended audience; flow’s correctly, makes a real connection, etc.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Alex’s principle of reading a text twice before touching it. Yes it’s hard, especially when you’re a grammar Nazi like me, ready to pounce on the never-ending mistakes, but reading a text twice always helps you not only comprehend it better but find other mistakes you might not have found the first time around.
Genre and audience most definitely affect how you edit. Audience is whom the piece is dedicated to. Why write in scholarly terms when your piece is intended for elementary students? It just doesn’t make any sense. When a piece of writing doesn’t reach its audience it has failed. This is where editing comes in for the save. If you’re an editor and you see this problem, it is your job to correct it. Genre plays an important part as well considering the manner in which the writing is done. For example, if you’re writing for a blog (like I am now) the language is going to be a lot more simple than if you’re writing for your dissertation, in which the wording would be professional and scholarly. These terms definitely came into play for the mini assignment we had in class. The intended audience and genre shaped the editing of the GQ article. Based on these two factors we were able to cut out what didn’t fit and re-word what needed to be changed.
Jenna said: "After reading Fleckenstein’s article, I’m left with the impression that the purpose of revising a work is to rearrange, add, or delete. Revision is meant to improve coherence of the work as a WHOLE. While editing improves the coherence of each sentence individually, revision takes into account the meaning of the whole." I agree because after reading I also saw that revision is a much broader look into a piece of writing than editing is.
My newfound definition of editing somewhat contradicts my theory of composing. I started off saying that composing is a reflection of you, but now that I see what editing really is, I think it’s a reflection of you and whoever edits your piece. While a piece of you DOES live within your own piece, other peoples corrections and opinions live within it as well. Of course your voice is the more prominent one, but there are other underlying voices too. Looking back at what I just wrote, editing did enhance my theory of composing after all.
In high school I was the girl who would turn in a fantastic paper, but my teacher would deduct points for grammar and spelling. My concept of editing was shaped by these experiences. I’ve always thought of editing as checking to make sure the details are correct. I’ve been working to improve my grammar and spelling thinking that would help me become a better editor. However, after these readings I have come to understand that editing id more than perfecting the details. It the revision process as well. When you first write something it’s raw and unpolished. The ideas may be incomplete and the grammar may need some work, but the idea is there. I agree with Jocelyn’s assessment of the Fleckenstein. “When she mentioned the writing and editing process between the three students in her article, I realized that editing is essentially a way to make something more clear and precise.” I agree with Fleckenstein’s depiction of editing being the process of making a composition more precise. It’s about taking the raw composition and cleaning it up. During the editing process you refine the composition. However, it’s not just about correcting the technical errors; it’s also about improving the word choice and structure of the piece.
ReplyDeleteEditing is not easy. To do it properly, the editor must take into account external factors such as the rhetorical situation and the audience. Therefore, the editing process is both detail oriented and related to the big picture. The task of an editor is to balance the two spheres of influence. As Alissa observed this can be an arduous process, “It can be very hard for them to understand that there is no set formula with writing: a + b does not necessarily equal a great paper, but it’s important to consider the different factors.” In my experience both editing and composition require time, skill and lots of patience. I always edit a paper at least three times: once for technical errors, once for content, and once for structure. After each edit I go back and make changes before moving forward, this is what I consider to be revision. Therefore, to me revision and editing are both part of the same process. Editing is determining where there is room for improvement and revision is the process of executing the changes.
In class when we were asked to edit the piece for GQ’s audience in one class period it cringed. For me editing is always a long process, so the time constraint of only one class period was a challenge. Thankfully our teams broke down the edits, so everyone had their own task. The major drawback of everyone working together, yet independently, was a lack of communication. I didn’t get to see what the main editor was removing and revising while I was fact checking. So I wound up checking all the facts, and there were a lot of them, rather that only the ones we were actually using in the article. When you considered the audience to the piece was GQ readers, the article we were originally provided with was much too verbose and factual. As Alex and many of my other classmates have said, the original piece “read more like something you would find on JSTOR than in GQ.” This just emphasized my earlier point that when editing external influences (i.e. audience) are just as important as the technical construction of a piece.
Thing with this class is, most times I think I’ll have a general idea of what a word means prior to reading the text but once I began to read I realize how there is so much more to word. The word “edit” is a perfect example. Prior to the reading I would have just said editing is just proofreading, highlighting mistakes. However, its not just making markings on a paper with a red pen. Editing involves spell checking, punctuation, changing style, etc. If you think about it, you should edit everything. Whether it’s an e-mail or a paper for class I also read it out loud to myself twice and make changes along the way. Once done with that, similar to what Katie does, I will forward it to my mom or a friend and ask them to read it over for me and send it back with corrections. Normally for papers I will give myself a break from the paper for a little while before I edit it because I feel that once I have been looking at a paper for so long mistakes go unnoticed because I know how the paper is supposed to read. When editing a principle that I believe in and use myself is printing a hard copy. Reading through the hard copy and making your edits on the paper instead of on the laptop seems to work better, not being able to do that made the mini assignment so much harder to do.
ReplyDeleteAudience should always affect how you edit, everywhere from word choice to tone. When doing the mini assignment in class the author didn’t seem to know who his audience was. Michael summed it up perfectly, “This was a major issue in the GQ mini assignment. The “author” seemed to have no idea of their audience. They were writing a somewhat scholarly journal article for a bunch of men who want to know how to dress well, live well, and sex well.” The assignment seemed overwhelming because there was so much wrong that where to start was difficult. For a magazine article, even for GQ who some times have lengthy articles, this article was just way too long. Audience must play a role in how you edit because for example, if you are writing an article about American football for a sports analyst the terminology you would use should be different than if the article was geared toward a foreigner who knows nothing about football.
When comparing editing to revision I like how Ashley put it simply, “Editing seems to be the bigger chunk of work, depending on what level of editing you are doing. Revision is the final touch-ups and smoothing out any blemishes to ensure you have the best possible finished product.” My view point is similar, editing seems to be more extensive and when I think of revising I think of it as making the final touches that went unnoticed before you tie the finished piece together.
Composing isn’t just about word choice and style, there are more details to it. Editing is an extensive process and ones ability to edit only improves over time. Both take practice, it is not just innate. If asked a few weeks ago I would not have thought that editing would alter my theory of composing, but now it does. The mini assignment only showed me how long editing can take and how important it is to edit your work.
To edit is to refine, to work out the kinks, to make better. Editing has always been the part where I polish my work, where I sort out the concise from the bullshit. With every first draft I do, there is a lot of fat that has to be cut. There are some topics that I’ve written on in the past that have required massive amounts of editing. It seems like the harder time I have with coming up with a thesis, the more fat needs to be cut from the piece. If I don’t have a clear grasp of what is required of me for an assignment, I find that I fluff my drafts with things that aren’t necessarily award winning. Audience, topic, and guidelines are very important to me. If someone tells me just to write, I come up with a slew of questions. I am someone who works best with deadlines, guidelines, and rules. Creative writing is where I can write without definition, but for anything else? I need to know what is required.
ReplyDeleteWhen I’m editing, I look at the technicalities. I look at format first and structure the piece properly. Then I look at word choice, grammar, and other techniques in English. I look at the topic and make sure I’m following it precisely, that I’m not going off on tangents.
Revising is where I tinker with the content and change whole paragraphs around. Editing is where I take out the grammatical kinks and errors in structure. That’s where I edit the style more than the content. Although, I find that I revise most often at the same time I edit, so the two seem to go hand in hand. Revising would take out the tangents I might go on with first drafts. Editing helps refine the revision.
A teacher I had in dual enrollment once told me that “nothing you write is set in stone.” Her point was that editing was a vital part in making a piece work. Once I write it down, I can change it and should be comfortable with that. A first draft is just that, first. There will come a second, third, perhaps even a fourth, as long as I keep looking at it, there is a chance to change something that will sharpen a piece. There will always be something I didn’t think of earlier, a new source I discovered, new context, and new ideas to consider.
When I think of editing, I cringe. Editing is endlessly tedious, but vital to writing. It’s so technical, so deliberate, so clean. Those who can effectively edit are the mechanics of language. They tear open a piece of work, identify problems and correct them. And how they do this without compromising the work of its creator is nothing short of impressive.
ReplyDeleteEditing is just a simple as making corrections. In the more prehistoric view, it’s fixing grammatical errors and fixing typos. At times, you may need to rearranging sentences to make them more readable. Then you get to a higher level of writing and have to consider an audience. The editor must see the significance in that and guide you in the right direction. It all boils down to a process of repairing a piece of work that could be delivered in a more fashionable or appropriate way than the original form.
When editing my own work, I already know all about it (the piece of work that is). I know what I meant and how it was supposed to be expressed. It’s easy to spot the obvious imperfections in grammar or structure. When editing the work of others, I find that I have to get a comprehension of what message their trying to deliver. This may take reading and analyzing it several times over. Once I’ve done this, it’s first and foremost important to remove the obvious blemishes. I definitely see Alexis’ take on the first run-through, that it’s difficult to not make corrections as you see them. By doing this, you do yourself a disservice as an editor.
Jocelyn makes a profound statement in how difficult it is to convey a message to others in a piece of writing. I agree with her emphasis of editing in this aspect. Without editing, we may believe that we’re reaching our audience. It’s through the peering in from an “outsider’s” eyes that we’re able to see whether or not we’re delivering the same package that we think we are. Genre and audience are of the utmost importance when writing, and especially in editing. An editor would do a terrible job to not recognize these factors when taking a piece of work and running it through a fine-tooth comb. As composers, we sometimes neglect the audience. It may be intentional or not, but regardless, we need someone to steer us in the right direction.
Editing and revising are one-in-the-same and completely different simultaneously. Revision is more about wiping away dust. Editing cuts out what is insignificant, emphasizes what is and dilutes the clutter in between.
Editing has enhanced my theory of composing because it looks beyond the act of simply creating something. After one creates a piece of work, they must examine it. After they have examined it, someone else must then do the same, but with a more critical eye. Not to insult or betray the piece, but to make it more powerful. All writing requires editing. I learn more and more about that as this class progresses.