Tuesday, March 6, 2007

combining editing marks

In one particular spot on the test (question 17.), I edited four consecutive things. The question read:
"Has your journal done any readings? Just two to four of your authors at a reading series for a night?"

I deleted the first question mark, added and m-dash, replaced "just" with "for example", and added a comma after that. I used a carrot to mark my addition of the m-dash and you corrected it by counting the m-dash and "for example" as part of the same edit (the replacement of "Just"). Your correction made the editing cleaner and didn't inhibit interpretation of the marks.

So, my question is this: Should we always try to combine editing where we can, or should it only be employed when there is no chance of confusion?

Thanks!

2 comments:

Pat said...

If possible, try to combine your marks. I know that it's sometimes hard to do. You make one change, and that leads you to reconsider the rest of the sentence; then you make another change, and so forth.

Pat said...

I forgot to add that carrot should be caret.