In this video I'd just like to share a few
general tips on editing, and then we'll
look at a specific paragraph and see
what editing looks like in practice.
Now in terms of what I recommend to
pretty much all students,
I really suggest that people take a
little bit of extra time and set their
assignment aside for a day or two and
then come back to it. And then they're
going to see the writing with a new pair of
eyes, because when you're in the trenches
so to speak, your vision is very
limited. You you don't really get a sense
of the big picture. You're so attached to
what you have written it's just very
difficult to create that distance that's
necessary for good editing. Now obviously
people procrastinate and I do too, but
whenever possible do set aside some
extra time. Printing it out can help as
well. When you keep focusing on the
screen and you keep seeing the same bit
of text in the same place, then printing
it out really helps to kind of break
through that barrier, and you're going to
see all kinds of mistakes that you
hadn't noticed before. Another good
strategy in relation to this is
to change the font -- the size, and maybe
even the type or the spacing -- and
you're really going to see the text in a
different way. Reading aloud also helps.
Now some people suggest that you read
your essay backwards one sentence at
a time! That does help in terms of
figuring out if the sentences are
complete, but beyond that I don't think
it's super helpful. So I wouldn't
recommend it, but you can do it if you
like. You can obviously run a spellcheck
or a grammar check. That's definitely a
good place to start, but don't rely on
that as as the be and end all. You can
also go for help. You can find a friend,
or go to a teacher, or hire a tutor --
whatever you like. I do think this is
valuable and often overlooked -- especially
just going to a friend and saying, "Hey, is
this clear to you? What am I trying to
argue?" It's
really good to try to get that friend to
express
in his or her own words what the actual
argument of the paper is. Don't just say,
"well, did you get it?" and the friend says,
"Yep, I got it," and move on. That doesn't
really help. You really want to say, "Okay,
you read it. What is it saying?"
And then if you get the right message
back in some detail then you know you're
on the right track. Also ask some
other specific questions. Where did you
get stuck? Would you like more proof at a
certain point? It's really the
specific questions that are
going to help here. You can also often go
to your teacher or to a Writing
Centre if you're at a university that
that has one. Don't be shy to do this.
I know some professors at universities
can be kind of condescending sometimes --
a little grumpy, a little standoffish -- but
they're also lots of wonderful, kind
professors who are more than happy when
somebody walks in through the door in
office hours or makes an appointment and
is willing to actually go through a
paper and do some editing. Aright, so
hopefully that gives you some general
tips. Let's look next at an actual
paragraph here, and this one needs a lot
of work, but at least we've got a start
here. I'm not going to read through
this, but you can do it yourself. Just
pause the video for a second and then
we'll talk here about some things that
you can do. The first thing I usually
recommend is to look at the big picture
first. What's the big picture?
Before you start fine-tuning all kinds
of details you need to have a sense of
the big picture. In this case what we
seem to be saying here is that we have a
song ... called "Time On
Her Side," and it has some ambiguous
lyrics. At the end of the paragraph we
have some more specific arguments
actually. It turns out that it's not just
the lyrics that are ambiguous, but it's
also the woman being described here that
seems to have a kind of mysterious
appeal. Now notice what I just did there
with my pen. I started underlining things.
and I really
recommend that your first step to
editing when you've printed it out is
just to go through the paragraph and try
to figure out what is the structure.
What is it this actually saying? So try
to create a kind of map of the paragraph,
and you can do that by underlining. You
can also write little notes in the
margins. So, for instance, right now what
we figured out is that there's
a song, it has some ambiguous lyrics ,there's
the title, and there's a woman who's also
mysterious. Then if we look at the stuff
in-between we might say "Okay, here
is a quotation, so we're just going to
bracket that a little bit. We have some
questions here about the meaning. Then it
says that 'At most we can say that the song
is about the longing for a young woman.'
So we might as well underline that. Okay, and
then this is compared to the siren call ...
so the sirens who lead sailors to their
death. And then there's another quote and
then we get to this idea of something
being seductively ambiguous, and then
there's the beauty and vitality of a
woman, and then we come back to death."
Aright, so we have a sense then of
the structure of this and then we have
to decide, well, are we happy with this
structure? Does it make sense to
us? Are there going to be points that need
more proof? Are we going to have to move some
things around? And I would say in this
case, yes, we do need to move some things
around, because the end of our paragraph
is much better than the beginning. The
beginning just says, well, the song is
kind of ambiguous. That doesn't really
help very much, so somehow we're going to
have to take this end piece and probably
move it to the beginning somehow, because
that's our general argument. And
there are some things that we could say.
We could say, well, the ambiguity of the
lyrics really enhances the song, because
the song is about ambiguity. Or you
could say the ambiguity of the lyrics
reflects the ambiguity of the woman who
is being described. But whatever you want
to say, our final argument is actually
much more specific. And we're going to have
to move that back to the beginning and
figure out what we're saying here.
What is good though is that our topic
sentence, as it's called ... so our topic
sentence, the first opening bit here, does
give us a clearer sense of what poem or
song we're talking about, who the artist is ...
it gives us a general scope, and that
definitely helps. But again we need to
just improve it a little bit. Once we've
got this big picture figured out, then we
can move to what you might call micro-
editing. Then you can move to kind of the
specifics of the writing, and I would
suggest you don't do this
too quickly. Really try to get the big
picture figured out first, and be ready
to move stuff around, because if you're
not then you're just doing little
touch-ups. And if you have
something that doesn't work and you're
just doing kind of cosmetic stuff it's
just putting makeup on a rhinoceros or
something. It just doesn't really
help that much. I'm not sure why you'd do
that anyway, but alright. So let's
move on then to some specific
editing, and give some examples of what
you can do. Obviously you should ask
yourself some questions. So did I prove
my point? Did I prove the point? Do
I have enough evidence? Do I need to give
some more quotations, some more examples?
Did I provide specific and detailed kinds
of proof? So is it detailed enough or do
I need to do something there as well?
Does everything connect -- and we call this
coherence -- does everything connect? And I
think a wonderful thing to do is to go
from each sentence to the next and think
of it as a kind of necklace with pearls
on it. I mean all these individual points.
That's a very ugly necklace! But
you want that thread to keep going all
the way through. Does everything connect
clearly to the next point? Once we've got
that figured out then we can zoom in
even more and that's when the editing
takes place in terms of specific wording.
So I'm going to give just a few examples
of the kind of specific editing
you can do here. One thing you can ...
think about is the tone of
your writing -- so the tone -- and I'll give a
couple of examples here. If you write, for
instance, "Take the following lines," "take"
is an imperative. It's like
ordering your reader. Is that really what
you want to do? Maybe you should switch
it up a bit. You can tone it down a bit
by saying, "Take, for example, the following
lines." Maybe that makes it a little bit
less aggressive. Or you can reword this
introduction, and be more specific about
what these lines actually have to say.
After this we also have this question
"What does that even mean?"
Now that's a very colloquial kind of
phrasing. "Colloquial" means
slang, so maybe that question isn't the
best. Maybe we want something else. We
can also then ... once we have these these
questions a little bit better or we or
we leave them out ... we can also think, well,
have we really explained the quotation
in detail. So in this case we might say
something like
the quote starts with this very
conventional image of a garden rose and
then we end with this bizarre notion
that the golden shadow is stinging,
and maybe we can talk about this in more
detail. We can say, well, the move from
something very conventional and
stereotypical to something very strange
and enigmatic -- that's
representative of the poem or the
lyrics of the song as a whole. We see
this all the time,
and once we start to do that kind of
analysis then we go, yeah, that's much
better. That's a lot more detailed.
Another thing we can do as we focus on
word choice is we can go through the
... writing
and try to figure out, well, which words
are the best and which ones can we
improve? Don't use a thesaurus here. That
tends to just change the register of
your writing, but try to really find
better word choices. I'll give some
examples here. Let's have a quick look
at the verbs. Here we say the song
"is about."
Whenever you use this word "is" ... "is" is not
the strongest verb in terms of
being the most descriptive. A lot of
people rely on "is" all the time.
Here we have "is compared" -- that's a
passive voiced verb. I think
there's another one here as well: "In
other words, it's." There's another "is"
that's kind of hiding there as well.
So if you can improve those and make
them more specific, that can really help.
In this case you might say something
like "the song describes." That's
much better. In the second example here
("is compared") maybe you want to say, well,
"the speaker compares," and make it
active, you know. Those are some
choices you have. Another example of
a verb that needs some help is this one
here: "also give off." Now first of all this
is not quite right because here we have
the beauty and vitality --
these sound like two things, but really
they're being described as one.
It's the same kind of thing, as it's one
concept. So then we would say "gives off,"
but even that sounds a little bit
colloquial. Maybe we could say
something like "exudes." Maybe that
sounds better.
Or if you still don't like that you can
just rewrite entirely. Another thing to
look for is are your quotations
integrated properly. This quotation is
not. It's just sitting there. Doesn't have
an introduction. It's hard to make sense
of, so make sure you integrate your
quotations with what's often called the
signal phrase -- a phrase that says, "Hey,
there's a quotation coming. Look out!"
There's something you need to do here. We
need to make sense of it and then
there's all kinds of other
grammatical issues you can edit for as
well. So, for instance, the last sentence
here is a fragment sentence. It's not
complete. It's also very melodramatic. So
maybe we're going to scratch that or
rewrite that and do something with it. In
the end here we went into a lot of
detail in terms of how you can edit, but
when I have students come into my office
to talk about their writing, this is what
I like to do with them -- go through their
writing and say, "how can we really make
this better? How can we focus on the
details, improve your writing." And I think
if you get into this habit then
eventually it becomes second nature and
you start to do increasingly more
editing as you write so you don't have
to leave everything to the end. Your
writing will become sharper, more
interesting, more compelling, and that's
ultimately what we want.