Abdinasir Bashir, Becca Sorensen
Eng 271
Chapter 8 Summary
Revising and editing are big processes to consider when writing a document. Revising is the process of changing everything about the document. Editing is the process of changing some parts of the document. These two processes will greatly help a writer to be able to write a better document.
There are two types of revision; global revision and local revision. Global revision is reorganizing the complete document. Local revision is revising single paragraphs and sentences. When revising, a person checks on the content, structure, organization, coherence, logic, and design of the document. Barbara Sitko, a revision strategy researcher, has developed a six step revision process. The six steps include getting feedback, assessing feedback, making attributions, testing the text, setting goals, selecting strategy, (and finally revising.) During revision a person checks on one element of the document at a time. Another way to begin revising is to have your audience, actual or simulated, give you feedback. Two changes to consider while revising are the text and design of a document. Re-visioning of text and document design often inspire or re-create the desire for one to revise.
The four functions of editing to consider are; content accuracy, design review, proofreading, and administrative responsibilities. Content accuracy refers to checking that the content of the document is accurate. Design review deals with checking on the size, font type, and matching textual references. Proofreading is a method used to check if there are any problems or language errors in the document. A person checks on the grammar, spelling, punctuation, citations, and headings of the document. Many people use software tools when editing such as spell check. However, when using word-processing software one needs to be aware of the limitations that arise such as inconsistent writing styles, confusing sentence structures, or poorly organized documents. That is why a person shouldn't fully depend on the software. Document cycling is used on network computers to get individual people to edit and revise document parts all at the same time (like google docs?). Administrative responsibilities are for those familiar and comfortable with corporate policies, production and publication processes, and managerial skills.
The four most common copyediting problems are using concrete details, direct language, positive phrasing, and eliminating wordiness. Using direct language and positive phrasing helps the reader to read the document quickly and simply. Eliminating wordiness helps make it easy to read a document. A person can eliminate wordiness by avoiding redundancy. The types of redundancy are redundant pairs like, "first and foremost", redundant modifiers such as, "collaborate together", and redundant categories, for example, "bitter taste." It is helpful to reduce noun strings, "which are a series of two or more nouns in which the first nouns modify the later nouns," ( Burnette, Technical Communication, Pg. 282), in order to improve document writing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
Chapter 8 review on revising and editing was helpful. Where I work we create a lot of real estate ads, real estate agents have a tendency to be a little wordy and redundant. As a designer I have to fit their description into a small standard template, in doing so I have to revise their description into simpler and shorter words, without losing the context. Most times when this is done most of the realtors are unware that their description was even alterd. I thought Burnett gave good examples of revising and editing.
Knowing you can revise and edit a project afterwards can take some of the pressure off and allow you to get started creating it. It can be a little overwhelming to start the project. The chapter broke down revision into global and local revision techniques. The six step revision process developed by Barbara Sitko will be a good reference in the future. The four functions of editing were a good review as well and it is good to be aware of potential problems that can arise during the process.
This chapter can be very helpful in all aspects for future reference. In all job descriptions revision and basically "getting to the point" are extremely important attributes to have when working in a certain profession. I think it's important to be able to freely express your ideas and when it's done to simplify it better so that it sticks in the mind of your intended audience better.
Revising and editing are some of the biggest parts in school, work, and life in general. We always need to be presenting documents that are accurate and correct with little errors. This especially applies with work and school. I liked reading this chapter because it definitely states how important this process really is.
Again in this chapter it talked about documents containing unnecessary words. I found the section of the book that talked about the four most common copyediting problems a good tool. Although it is easy to delete some of the redundant words it’s just a good thing to keep in mind before and during your writing. Another interesting part under the copyediting problems was using positive phrasing. It just gave lists of words that weren’t so psychologically negative. This chapter gave good information so that one can look back on and use in the future.
Revision to me is the most important step for the creation of a document. It improves all the points that one wants to prove into a simpler document that everyone would rather read.
This chapter gave a great technical view of editing and revising. The six steps include "getting feedback, assessing feedback, making attributions, testing the text, setting goals, selecting strategy, (and finally revising.)" These steps are very important in creating any business document or something of importance. Also, I thought that the examples in the text were very helpful.
Revising and editing is very important when creating a project. It comes into play largely to improve how the message you want to send out actually is understood the way you want it to be. Not "beating around the bush" will allow for better information to be shared and shared effectively. The six steps in the book will help me to better my writing skills.
Reviewing and revising has not always been my strong point of writing a paper or doing a project but this chapter helped me review the techniques. Feed back from an outside source seems to help me the most. This was a very good summary.
Before this chapter I did not realize editing and revisions can be a tedious and pertinent process. I can see how having a strategy for revising and redesigning is important for a business. It is true that electronic means cannot edit and revise a document to its fullest potential, that human responsibility is imperative within the editing and revision phase. Having the abilities to be a great “proof-reader” can help a business immensely.
The only way to grow as writers/communicators is to review and revise. Most projects we work on will have a time table associated with it, thus there may not be enough time to fully revise to maximum quality. I believe review/revision takes practice, thus cutting the actual time it takes to perform it. Practice makes perfect.
I posted a substantial bit about the revision process in my Chapter 7 comments because I read both of the chapters the same time and generally think of the writing process and revision process as intertwined and not mutually exclusive. This is probably what the book meant by avoiding redundancy I'm sorry it wasn't intentional. I thought the feasibility chart was cool and relevant to the type of information that we will probably see in the workplace during our lifetime, but overall an informative chapter that was a good review of the revising and editing process.
Post a Comment