Thursday, February 22, 2007

Redundant

So I know we are supposed to edit instead of delete text, but a large portion of the text is redundant, misplaced, and illogical. I know it's late to be posting about this, but I think I'm going to have to claim clarity as my aim here. As well as keeping the author's colloquial, albeit cheesy style.

What do you think Pat? Am I going against what you want us to do, which is practice as much as possible our editing marks?

I feel torn, but I'm gonna go with my gut and with what I would do in a non-test situation.

1 comment:

Pat said...

I loved your characterization of the author's style as "colloquial, albeit cheesy," and at first I was going to respond, "You go, girl!"

After a few moments of reconsideration, however, I decided that it might be better—for the sake of the lessons to be learned from the test, not so much for the letter itself—to advise you to be conservative in what you delete. You will learn more by restraining the impulse to strike out large blocks of text.

Of course you'll do the learning with your teeth clenched, but teeth clenching is one of the traits of copyeditors ;-)