EDITING PROCESS MODULE FIRST YEAR SERIES WRITING CENTER UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW  Revision vs. Editing vs. Proofing  Rhetoric of Editing (Why?/My Audience)  Steps

EDITING FOR AUDIENCE You’re writing for others, so you need to get in their shoes or in their ears If you don’t have a live/willing listener/reader:  Read your document aloud to yourself.  Not like a robot, but in a conversational way  Listen for long sentences or confusing word orders If you do have a live/willing listener/reader,  Give your listener a copy of your document with a pen/cil.  Read your document aloud to the listener and have the listener mark a “?” at each confusing part, without remarking on the problem.  Review the marked ?s and trust your audience: if they don’t get something, it’s likely your wording/explanation, and you can attend to that.

GUIDED PRACTICE  Let’s practice editing a text: Dating back to at least the late 14th century the word monster has operated under several, often-conflicting meaning within the English language, and through the Latin word m ō nstrum we finds its roots in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) men-1, which we can take to mean “to think,” this construction resonates in the English language with words associated with mind, memory, manifestations, and warnings: mental, mentality, dement, dementia, mania, memento, mentor, admonish, monster, premonition, amnesty, among others (American Heritage 54). The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) explains that the PIE- derived Latin m ō nstrum signifying a “portent, prodigy, monstrous creature, wicked person, monstrous act, atrocity,” a definition that is noticeably a mix collection of good, bad, and neutral connotations, none of which refers to any concrete entity (“Monster, n.”). In its word root associations, then, monster is a term that simultaneously evokes the subject of mental ability–or inability–and denote an ability to show or indicate something In regards to all things mental, the word monster may function to make real something that is otherwise intangible or inaccessible for another. and, in its ability to demonstrate or show something, the term may function as a mediator between the sign and what the sign signified. In both ways, the word monster can never simply be what it appears to be but needs to be understood instead by way of some compliment(s).

ARTIFACT-BASED PRACTICE  Now, let’s look at a writing sample you’ve brought with you to the workshop. How can we apply these kinds of steps/practices to your draft? (10 minutes)

EDITING ADVICE/TIPS  The Write Life. "25 Editing Tips for Tightening Your Copy”: Remember: you’re better able to choose than Microsoft Word, so don’t let Word cow you into a mechanical fix that you don’t understand.