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Comprehensive Editing. TECM 5195 Dr. Lam. Textbook Defines as.
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Comprehensive Editing TECM 5195 Dr. Lam
Textbook Defines as • Editing for the full range of document qualities, including content, organization, and design as well as grammar and punctuation, with the goal of making a document more usable, suitable for its purpose and readers, and comprehensible.
My Rule of Thumb • If it involves editorial judgment, then it’s likely comprehensive • Content, Organization, Visual Design, Style, illustrations, accessibility, and reuse
Content How much editorial judgment is involved in: • Fact checking? • Appropriate level of detail, amount of jargon, etc? • Completeness of content?
Organization How much editorial judgment is involved in: • Organizational cues and signals? • The order of information? • The connection between ideas, concepts, etc.?
Visual Design How much editorial judgment is involved in: • Using paragraphs vs. lists vs. tables? • Paper size? • Use of contrast, alignment, repetition, and proximity? • Overall layout (1 column vs. multi-column)? • Font selection?
Style How much editorial judgment is involved in: • Grammar, usage, punctuation, spelling, and mechanics • Efficiency of sentence structure? • Concreteness and accuracy of words? • The writer’s tone?
Illustrations How much editorial judgment is involved in: • Need for illustrations? • Appropriateness of illustrations used? • Construction or quality of illustrations? • Placement of illustrations?
Accessibility How much editorial judgment is involved in: • Determining if appropriate accommodations have been made for readers with disabilities?
Reuse How much editorial judgment is involved in: • Deciding what medium to display content? (adding an online version vs. print or both) • Choosing to use content from another source or to use the current content in another source?
Method for Comprehensive Editing • Discuss with author what level of editing they want. ****You will need to explain what comprehensive editing is. (Example on page 212 is helpful) • Proofread - “I can check for typos” • Copyedit – “I can clean up the text and edit for grammar, punctuation, etc.” • Comprehensive – “I can edit for organization and style” • Analyze purpose, readers, and uses • Evaluate the document • Establish specific editing objectives (formed from evaluations and both author’s/editor’s goals) • Review plan with author
GREAT list of questions, p. 237 • For analyzing a document’s purpose, readers, and uses, there’s a great list of questions on p. 209. • In an ideal world, the author will have already considered purpose, readers, and uses, but this isn’t always the case
Resist temptation! • Resist the temptation to proofread first—it’s inefficient. You may cut that entire paragraph later. • Don’t start by editing line by line • Instead, shift your thinking and read the whole document first
How do we do that? • Discuss purpose with the author • Entertain? Persuade? Inform? • Shared understanding is of utmost important in this process • Multiple passes—read it first
Must begin with this: • What the heck are we talking about here? • If you can’t easily answer this question, there is a fundamental issue with the document.
One of my favorite techniques • Use the Table of Contents Function to check • Overall organization of the document • Parallelism of all the headings
Be careful, talented editors! • Only make changes that you can articulate why you are making the change • We now want to stay away from“this sounds better” if you can’t explain why—then it’s likely just your writing style that you prefer