Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Extra-Credit Exercise -- Hand in a HardCopy
Try your hand at tightening this wordy example. You’ll earn 10 points extra-credit.
Successful writers share a common trait: voice. They write in myriad tones— plaintive, witty, sassy, smart—to suit the subject matter. To make a good grade, college writers typically focus on tone rather than on tightness.
Voice is vital. You can overemphasize it, though, making careless errors that irk professors who have to read a voluminous amount of essays and exercise. You can help them by employing copyediting techniques, not only to polish your prose, but also to increase output.
Create your response first, focusing on voice and target audience. If your piece is the proper length, use the techniques on the next page to tighten your piece and then add more substance—pithy quotes or pertinent research. If you exceed the word count, use the techniques to sculpt a publishable piece. Finally, hone, revise and polish your prose to suit course requirements.
WD Based on an article by Michael J. Bugeja: a professor of journalism and a special assistant to the president at Ohio University. Writers Digest; July 2001, Page 42
Below is a loosely written 215-word item. Edit it. Make it Concise!
Jane Doe slumps down in her chair until midnight amid the slush and stale pizza in front of piles of essays threatening to avalanche on her half-empty bottle of cola onto the grimy tile floor of the kitchen.
There are many reasons why Doe, an assistant professor, puts a failing grade on some essays, and length of the essays is one of them.
Professors dislike wordiness. Why shouldn’t they? Less is really more.
“Too many writers tend to be wordy. True, a response should be conversational. But it shouldn’t ramble. We just don’t have the time. Good prose—good college-level prose, at least—plants an image or idea in the mind of the reader, phrase after phrase,” Doe says.
According to Doe, on manuscripts, approximately 42 responses out of 480 per month is acceptable, requiring 12 hours evaluation per week during a semester. Consider a 1-week assignment with 15 contact hours per week in which the instructor will be grading/marking and will require prep time. The instructor would be credited service of:
15 x 3.48 = 52.20 hours of service per week
52.20 x 2 = 104.40 hours of service total
Before taking a sip of her soda pop, Doe places a failing mark on another response after reading her umpteenth submission and noting the perils of teaching today.
Consequently, it is tougher than you might think to hand in a padded response. However, a student’s chances of success will improve by using copyediting techniques. Otherwise, you will waste time and money and give up on the dream of being an A-plus writer.
Tightening Tips:
• Extreme mood setting. Use a few descriptive words in your lead, of course, but don’t overload it with sensory data.
• “To be” constructions. You usually can collapse sentences that begin with“there are” or “it is.”•Conjunctive constructions. Each excised word counts when you are trying to honor word counts. Cut unneeded conjunctions.
• “To be” appositives. You can tighten appositives that begin with “who is,” “which are,” etc.
• Excessive possessive constructions. You usually can delete “of by repositioning words or by using a noun’s or pronoun’s possessive case.
• Exclamatory comments. Sometimes they emphasize a point. Mostly, they take up space.
• Parenthetical comments. Analyze any thing parenthetical. If important, it’s misplaced foreshadowing. If unimportant, delete it.
• Rhetorical comments. You usually can omit these without losing meaning.•Unprocessed quotations. Make full quotes partial, paraphrasing weak, redundant or ungrammatical sections. The written word is usually sharper than the spoken.
• Unprocessed research: Here, the research is in the wrong voice. Worse, it’s usually wordy.
•Adverbial time elements: Cut the adverbs and revise chronologically. Or end up with gobbledygook. •Adverbial transitions: One or two per manuscript may be allowable, but this isn’t.
—Michael J. Bugeja
Successful writers share a common trait: voice. They write in myriad tones— plaintive, witty, sassy, smart—to suit the subject matter. To make a good grade, college writers typically focus on tone rather than on tightness.
Voice is vital. You can overemphasize it, though, making careless errors that irk professors who have to read a voluminous amount of essays and exercise. You can help them by employing copyediting techniques, not only to polish your prose, but also to increase output.
Create your response first, focusing on voice and target audience. If your piece is the proper length, use the techniques on the next page to tighten your piece and then add more substance—pithy quotes or pertinent research. If you exceed the word count, use the techniques to sculpt a publishable piece. Finally, hone, revise and polish your prose to suit course requirements.
WD Based on an article by Michael J. Bugeja: a professor of journalism and a special assistant to the president at Ohio University. Writers Digest; July 2001, Page 42
Below is a loosely written 215-word item. Edit it. Make it Concise!
Jane Doe slumps down in her chair until midnight amid the slush and stale pizza in front of piles of essays threatening to avalanche on her half-empty bottle of cola onto the grimy tile floor of the kitchen.
There are many reasons why Doe, an assistant professor, puts a failing grade on some essays, and length of the essays is one of them.
Professors dislike wordiness. Why shouldn’t they? Less is really more.
“Too many writers tend to be wordy. True, a response should be conversational. But it shouldn’t ramble. We just don’t have the time. Good prose—good college-level prose, at least—plants an image or idea in the mind of the reader, phrase after phrase,” Doe says.
According to Doe, on manuscripts, approximately 42 responses out of 480 per month is acceptable, requiring 12 hours evaluation per week during a semester. Consider a 1-week assignment with 15 contact hours per week in which the instructor will be grading/marking and will require prep time. The instructor would be credited service of:
15 x 3.48 = 52.20 hours of service per week
52.20 x 2 = 104.40 hours of service total
Before taking a sip of her soda pop, Doe places a failing mark on another response after reading her umpteenth submission and noting the perils of teaching today.
Consequently, it is tougher than you might think to hand in a padded response. However, a student’s chances of success will improve by using copyediting techniques. Otherwise, you will waste time and money and give up on the dream of being an A-plus writer.
Tightening Tips:
• Extreme mood setting. Use a few descriptive words in your lead, of course, but don’t overload it with sensory data.
• “To be” constructions. You usually can collapse sentences that begin with“there are” or “it is.”•Conjunctive constructions. Each excised word counts when you are trying to honor word counts. Cut unneeded conjunctions.
• “To be” appositives. You can tighten appositives that begin with “who is,” “which are,” etc.
• Excessive possessive constructions. You usually can delete “of by repositioning words or by using a noun’s or pronoun’s possessive case.
• Exclamatory comments. Sometimes they emphasize a point. Mostly, they take up space.
• Parenthetical comments. Analyze any thing parenthetical. If important, it’s misplaced foreshadowing. If unimportant, delete it.
• Rhetorical comments. You usually can omit these without losing meaning.•Unprocessed quotations. Make full quotes partial, paraphrasing weak, redundant or ungrammatical sections. The written word is usually sharper than the spoken.
• Unprocessed research: Here, the research is in the wrong voice. Worse, it’s usually wordy.
•Adverbial time elements: Cut the adverbs and revise chronologically. Or end up with gobbledygook. •Adverbial transitions: One or two per manuscript may be allowable, but this isn’t.
—Michael J. Bugeja
Monday, February 2, 2009
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