Week 15 - Working with Writers

This has definitely been an eye opening class. I have always really enjoyed writing. It’s one of the reasons I picked the major I did. It’s also the reason I thought this class would be a breeze. Surprise! I really have enjoyed Editing, but it also made me realize how much I don’t know and what my weaknesses are.

This assignment was enjoyable because it helped me to realize how much I have learned in this class, and it was nice being able to help someone else. I work with a guy named Carson, and we happen to have Mass Media and Society together. For the final paper in that class, we had to write about some form of media or media outlet, and how it has evolved over the past few decades. He chose to write about ESPN, and was willing to let me edit his paper.

Some of the main pieces of advice I gave him, were about removing the clutter from his writing. I know all college students do this. We have teachers asking us to write an eight page paper, and we will do whatever we can to get to that desired page length. So while I understood, I gave him a lot of suggestions about how to rewrite certain sentences to be more concise.

Overall, the majority of his mistakes were minor; A few spelling errors, missed punctuation, some AP errors with capitalization, and a few misuses of there/their/they’re.

The highlight of day? I got to correct an affect/effect mistake! That was something that has always stumped me. I am proud to say that I caught it and immediately knew that it was wrong. I was actually able to share with him how I remember the difference. “Affect” can generally be replaced by the word “Influence.” “Effect” is used to say what the result was, and can be replaced with the word “Impact.”