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Expo 1213 P2R LoLordo Sentence-Level Editing I am going to introduce a simple language of editing abbreviations that will apply at the sentence level; you’ll see this language start to appear in the margins of prelims and your second essay draft. This language falls into two major categories: Grammar: A grammatically incorrect sentence: Fragment Splice Subject-verb agreement [Frag] [Spl] [S-V] Clarity: A sentence that is not grammatically incorrect, but that causes its readers unnecessary difficulties, for one or more of various reasons: Point of view Reference (pronoun) Syntax Vagueness [POV] [Ref] [Syn] [Vag] (Badly integrated citations [Cit] may manifest themselves as errors of grammar or of clarity.) Expression: A sentence that is sufficiently correct and clear, but that suffers from one or more of the following problems: it repeats words unnecessarily; it sounds egregiously clunky—in one way or another, it misses the chance to be a really strong sentence.... Wordiness, aka Verbosity Repetition Awkwardness [Ver] [Rep] [Awk] (Problems at the level of the word/phrase are not a part of this system; I will typically indicate lexical problems with the word “diction” [Dic], supplementing that with modifiers such as Vague / Academic / Formal / Informal / Poetic / Thesaurus…) The difference between an ungrammatical sentence and a sentence that is unreadable for syntactic reasons is complicated! If a comment refers to grammar, you will likely be able to fix the problem by re-punctuating, or making relatively minor changes: most grammar errors made by native speakers are errors of proofreading. With respect to clarity, the required changes may be more difficult: the thought process “behind” your sentence may need to be reconstructed. Here I will only mention the category of “usage”, which refers to the various rules propounded by various linguistic authorities that we all absorb in the early years of our schooling. Rules of usage—how people think others ought to use the language—are easily conflated with rules of grammar—which attempt to systematize the internal system that allows speakers to produce utterances in a particular language. The “grammar” that most of us learned in school is an awkward combination of the two aforementioned sets of rules. As a native speaker of English, your relation to grammar is sometimes paradoxical: you don’t know how you know what you know.) Sentence-Level Editing 2: Call the Doctor! The “Paramedic Method” for prose revision was introduced by Richard Lanham in his textbook Revising Prose. The following process is a simplified version of Lanham’s method; it will help you revise with an eye to clarity and concision. (Note: it is not inevitable that those two stylistic virtues go together—but they often do. Writers tend to squirt out clouds of language when they are worried, uncertain, or under pressure...Simplification forces you to figure out what you are saying.) Exhibit A: “The cause of Byron’s success at achieving artistic fame is understanding the influence of cultural background on the process of gaining reputation.” Read the sentence out loud, with emphasis, and with (appropriate) feeling. What does the sentence mean? Does it convey that meaning as a human being might intend it? The following list is meant to give you a basic procedural framework for revising prose (your own or others’) at the sentence level. The list itself does not help you “see” your prose with the properly cold eye: for that, some material reformulation of your essay is necessary. Drop the text into an editing interface, as in the “exercise” on this handout; alternatively, change fonts and print out; at a minimum, change font/spacing/etc, so as to make the text look new. You want to help yourself see what’s actually on the page, rather than the palimpsest of all possible versions that exists in your head and is particularly distracting when you are tired, writing late at night…) 1. Mark all prepositions (words concerning relations in space &/or time): on, to, in, at, of, since, through, after, off, for, before, over, from...) a. If you see phrases that string prepositions, consider revision 2. Mark all forms of the verb “to be.” a. If a form of “is” is the main verb, consider revision 3. Ask “where’s the main action?” a. If actions are expressed as nouns (“nominalized” verbs), consider revision 4. Consider making the actor the subject (“who”) of the sentence a. Consider capturing the key action of the sentence with an active verb 5. Can you cut “throat-clearing” at the beginning of a sentence? 6. Can you cut other redundant words (most often, adjectives / adverbs)? “Consider,” I say repeatedly—because decisions that may seem less than optimal, in the context of a single sentence, may be justified by the larger context of the paragraph. Guidelines are not rules.