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.”

 

Working With Writers Week 15

I edited my little sister’s term paper for her English 1010 class. I found a lot of good ideas in the reading of how to give feedback that is really going to help the writer. I edited it using the Microsoft Word editor and it really helped me organize the edits and give extensive tips for her paper. Since this is a lower level class, it was one of the first papers my sister wrote in college. There was a lot of jumbled writing and I think with the editing that I did and after talking to her and giving advice her paper turned out very well. There were a few things that I kept fixing that I learned from this class. There were several words that needed a hyphen in between the two and I loved that I could notice right of the bat.

    From the reading it explains that coaching means emphasizing the positive, listening to the writer, and asking questions rather than imposing answers. I really took this into thought as I discussed with her some of the issues in her paper. I asked her several questions instead of just stating and writing in what she did wrong. I made sure that the point she was trying to make in the paper would stay the same through our editing and would be the basis of what we fixed and changed. I also instead of just handing her paper back to her I showed her everything I fixed and explained to her some of the different ways we could make her own ideas flow better.

We decided to write the outline all over again taking ideas from the paper and organizing them so it would flow better and have good transitioning from each paragraph. I think transitioning was a huge game changer for her paper. It really made it flow and instead of chopping spreading of ideas it brought all the different ideas together and helped the paper to make a lot more sense and have structure.

    After breaking up the bigger ideas and portions of the paper we decided to look at certain sentences that I had highlighted that had some clutter. After using the thesaurus to write her paper there were unneeded larger words that really were unnecessary for the flow and simplicity of her paper. It was an argumentative essay so I explained to her that I think she should make sure she didn’t use the words “I, we, they,” as much as she did. We reworded a lot of it and it ended up coming together and making the paper even better.

    Another thing I learned from the reading is that talking with the writer for 2 minutes will save two hours later on after she finishes another draft of her paper. After she restructured it I looked at it again and I found little errors and it just had a lot better flow and her ideas made more sense after just discussing with her my opinions and the things I thought needed a little bit of change.

    I also learned that we need to get the writer talking I had her tell me her ideas and as she told me she really was able to put into words the basis of her paper and the central idea that she wanted to follow. I had her read out loud a lot of sentences in order to really hear the words that she wrote which really helps as a writer and editor to say things out loud in order to hear the things that could use some switching around. This helped me with future papers that I write and I think that if while I’m writing my own papers I should think more like an editor in order to have material that I’m satisfied with.

Don't Underestimate your Writer

I like that the text addressed that the writers ALREADY KNOW what sucks about their paper, they just don’t know how to fix it. That happened when I edited this week. My writer even said before we began that she knew her writing was all over the place, and sure enough she did have a problem with flow. I think it is important to validate that writers are intelligent and know what is bad, and not treat people like idiots for making mistakes. In one of my other communication classes this semester, I had a professor who did that. I felt that nervousness that the text talks about, and every time she would slash at my paper and my self-esteem. I like that the readings said that the world is full of bad editors, and those editors have good ideas, they just don’t know how to communicate them. That was her. She was a flat-out bad editor. She was great as a person, and she had lots of good ideas, but she just didn’t know how to communicate them in a way that didn’t sound like “This sucks so bad I can’t even look at it.”

With her in mind, I approached this assignment with great care. I didn’t want to slash someone’s self-esteem, but I also didn’t want to say “This piece is perfect,” when it is my job to tell them how to improve. I work at a call center, and I used to be a monitor there. We would listen to people’s calls and grade them on their professionalism, speed, tone and friendliness. When we were giving feedback, we used what is called the sandwich approach, which is something I highly recommend. It is basically “sandwiching” the bad stuff inside layers of good stuff. So you first tell them something they did well, or something you liked, so that it starts of in a positive direction and they don’t immediately get hit with disapproval. Then after you have told them something you like, you tell them something that they could improve. You explain what they did wrong, and then to end you tell them something positive again. That way they can go on their way on a good note, not feeling like we hate them because they messed up. 

Here is my grammar mistake for this week. 

Week 15

             Working with a writer this week has been quite the experience. I have been quite stressed out about the whole project. First off, working as a team is difficult because of the timing involved. I tried to set up a strict schedule for the exchanges between my writer and me. But I was somewhat disappointed when my writer procrastinated and I was unable to complete the assignment in the time frame I was hoping to.

            

            Aside from the stressful timeline I have actually enjoyed the experience quite a bit. I still do not trust myself completely and I have a lot to learn. I found myself referring to my book to ensure that the errors I found were valid ones. However, I was happy to see myself being right much of the time.

            Communication was another area I could potentially improve on in the future. First off portraying myself as authoritative without being overbearing and destructive was difficult for me. I felt as though I was being a bully much of the time (though my writer told me I was over thinking things, and that I should understand that I was being asked to criticize).

           Overall, the whole experience was fairly stressful for me. I felt as though I was given a responsibility I was not skilled enough to have. I will probably never actually edit as a profession. But, for my own work, I do hope to get better.  

Week 15, already!

Wow!  I can’t believe this semester is nearly over.  Time is going by so quickly! For our assignment this week, I edited a paper for my friend’s daughter.  She is a sophomore and this was the first paper she has had to write for any class.  She chose to write on the good and bad aspects of customer service. 

The advice I used from the chapter we were assigned to read was to first and foremost to remember that it wasn’t my paper. Keeping this in mind, I made a very concerted effort to understand her point of view.  I also was very careful to phrase any constructive criticism in a manner that she would embrace.  We talked about her paper for nearly an hour, and I feel we had some good, combined results.  I think I’m just as excited to see her grade on the paper as she is.  I probably had more fun doing this assignment than any other in this class.

For my editing mistake this week, I am actually going to use an announcement from another instructor.  He gave us time to write papers rather than formally meeting as a class but wanted us to know he was available if we needed any help.  The following is what he posted on canvas:

"As it states in the syllabus, we are not formally meeting next week due to the holiday. That being said, I am available to meet if you need on either Monday or Tuesday. If you need/want to meet and talk about your paper or other things, please shoot and email me and set up a time. I will be in and out those two days so trying to catch me may be tricky. Happy to meet, just coordinate with me."

I’m sure he meant to say shoot me an e-mail, rather than Shoot me and email.  This is why editing is important.  If I were to shoot him, it would be pointless to send him an email, don’t you think?

Everyone have a wonderful holiday!

Week 15

Yay!! The semester is almost over and Christmas break is right around the corner!  Good luck to everyone on their finals.  This weeks assignment was a little intimidating because it was the last assignment and at the end it says, "congratulations, you're an editor."  I definitely do not feel like an editor but I feel like I have improved from the beginning of the semester.  For this assignment I edited  my friends paper for one of her communication classes.  She is graduating this month and so I knew I had to get the editing right for her paper so that she didn't get any deductions.  Her paper was on what she learned this semester and what she was going to do when she graduated.  It was really interesting to read and it made me excited to graduate in the Summer.  It is a great accomplishment and I am so proud of her.  Editing her paper was a little scary but in the end she ended up with a good grade and was happy with the score she got on her paper.  If I would have done this at the beginning of the semester, I would have let her down and I know she would not have done great on that assignment.  I have learned a lot about editing and how to use appropriate grammar.  I know I still have a lot more work to do but I am a little more confident in my writing than I was.

The grammar error I found this week was on my friends paper.  She kept using than and then wrong.  She also had a lot of run on sentences and paragraphs that weren't very clear.


Another grammar error I found this week was on google.  I thought this one was funny so I thought I would share.

Week 13/14

I said this last week but I changed my mind, this was my favorite assignment of the semester.  I enjoyed looking at other websites and finding things that stood out on them.  I have a website of my own for my dance studio and this assignment helped me figure out what I need to change on my website.  It is really important to keep a website simple and clear so that it is easy to navigate around. It is also important to have a good color and font that is easy to read.  The web page needs to have good spacing, include the hick's law, good communication, purpose, images, F pattern design, mobile friendly and have grid based layouts.  These were some of the things I learned from this weeks assignment.  I then went to my web page and edited it so that it would fit these different layouts and designs.  I hope this will make my website more user friendly!


The grammar mistake I found this week was on Facebook.  Here is a picture!

It is extremely important that you know how to spell when you are posting things on the internet.  That is what I have learned from this editing class.  It makes you look a lot brighter if you know how to write and edit.  This is something that can apply to anyones daily life.