Talk:Rhetoric and Composition/Revising

--Joshboyd 23:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC) I rewrote a lot of this section. I hope I didn't step on your toes, Mark. But, then again, it is a Wiki; so, what's here today may be gone tomorrow anyway.

I redid the header, but I'm not attached to it, so changes or suggestions to make it more effective would be appreciated. Also, I keep referring to the process as "revising" because of the chapter title, but really I feel like it sounds off when I don't refer to it in most places as "revision." The reason I don't is because I want to stay more inline with how the chapter refers to it so I don't make it confusing for people who might not be as advanced as some of us are. Is this an issue? --Hema 16:48, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the professional editor section is problematic. It also seems to completely ignore the idea that most, if not all, the people using this textbook probably are not using a professional editor anyways. I'm striking it. Someone can bring it back if they feel it's an error to get rid of it. --Hema 16:32, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Back to the Drawing Board
I think the Rhet and Comp book would be much better if we clarified our definition/description of revising and editing. I suggest we do the following: - Place Revision above Editing on the table of contents page - Divide Revision into (a) Global Revision (i.e. overall organization/structure, cogency, purpose, supporting information, audience, etc) and (b) Sentence Level Revision (i.e. active verbs, parallelism, modification issues, concision, accuracy in word choice, etc.) - Refuse to discuss any of the issues above in the section on editing (other than to say, "If you have questions about word choice or usage, refer to the chapter on Revision). - Define editing as proofreading for grammatical errors (i.e. usage, pronoun-antecedent agreement, subject-verb agreement, punctuation, spelling, verb tense, adjective and adverb usage, capitalization, etc.) - Clearly convey that editing is the last step before a paper is turned in

I also think the distinctions between editing and revising only become more muddled when one discusses the tasks of professional editors. Professional editors do not just edit as I have defined it above. They are very much involved in revision as well. It's actually unfortunate we don't call them professional revisers. I think all the discussion about professional editors is superfluous and misleading. I'd really like to see these two chapters revised!--Joshboyd 21:51, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps this page is more on track than I thought. It includes a section showing the distinctions between revising and editing and proofreading, which I like. Can we take the editing chapter and include it in this chapter. The chapter could be renamed--Revising, Editing, Proofreading. I think separate chapters include too much overlap of material. For example, the editing chapter includes a section on micro vs. macro editing. Macro editing, however, is basically the same thing as revision. So much for being concise. To me it makes much more sense to lump all of this information into one chapter.--Joshboyd 22:42, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

--Mattbarton.exe 23:07, 16 October 2005 (UTC) I'm a bit concerned here that we're not sure what "revising" is and how it differs from editing, reviewing, and proofreading. I'd suggest you re-read the chapter about the writing process and make we're making a clear distinction here for the reader.

Remember E.B. White's mantra: "Omit needless words. Omit needless words. Omit needless words." - This is great.

Would it be beneficial to include the difference between revising, editing, and proofreading in ALL of these sections? --Emily.isackson (discuss • contribs) 21:04, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Point of confusion: I'm not sure how the version that I'm looking at today has been changed since Matt Barton's October 16, 2005 comment about the need to make clearer distinctions for the reader. As is, I understood the explanations of the differences between revising, editing, and proofreading.

Why use an asterisk in "sh*t"?

"Read and re-read your paper. In the first read-through consider overall purpose of the paper and whether it is expressed clearly." -- seems to be missing "the" before "overall purpose"

I really like this kind of commentary:

''But wait--don't you need to inflate your text so you can meet the minimum word count? Wouldn't it be better to use "due to the fact that" for "because" and "in addition to" for "and," since these phrases use far more words? Answer: NO. Any experienced reader will instantly see through such a pitiful scheme and will likely become irritated by the resulting "flabby" prose.''

... because it hits the wordiness nail on the head, and it's also opinionated and funny.

"you probably havea a problem with organization and transitions." -- should be "you probably have a a problem with organization and transitions."

The "conclusions" section could probably be fleshed out. --Matt.helm (discuss • contribs) 21:23, 27 January 2011 (UTC)