Posts Tagged proofreading
October 03
Talking To Yourself, In Which You Get Organized
One of the main problems I correct in others’ writing is the problem of organization: introductions are sketchy; body paragraphs are all over the place, discussing several points and maybe even some things that have nothing to do with the matter at hand; conclusions consist of one hastily scrawled sentence. So, how do you fix [...]
October 25
Webster’s Academy on YouTube
Let me precede this blog with a caveat: this is not an advertisement for Webster’s Academy. I’ve never heard of the place before now, and have no idea whether or not they’re good. However, they have put a whole slew of videos on YouTube, so you’re likely to run into one when you search for [...]
September 13
Uncaped Crusaders
I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar. – Benjamin Disraeli (For those of you who aren’t familiar with Mr. Disraeli, he was being facetious.) Just about everything we do is learned by watching someone else. If you take a newborn baby and plop it in a crib with a food source and [...]
July 12
Reverse Psychology
I occasionally teach creative writing; last week’s class involved an exercise where we took the “World’s Worst Poem” (according to Google) and fixed it. One of the people noted that she was able to see many faux pas in the author’s style of which she, herself, was guilty. We all had a look at the [...]
May 24
Doin’ It Wrong; U R Doin’ It Right
Artists – just like athletes – have to do exercises. I’m not talking about stretching out the muscles in your hands; I’m talking about stretching out your brain. No, it’s not that gross. Visual artists have to draw things from different perspectives. Musicians have to play scales. Actors have to assume characters they would never [...]
February 15
Using Prepositions
In the last two months, I believe I’ve corrected enough essays to kill a horse. A lot of the teachers and professors send notes back with my students, listing the particular grammatical sins of the student: I never want to see a contraction again! Semi-colons are not commas! If I were able to do such [...]
January 18
Humans or Machines?
Where I live, it’s the end of the semester; post-secondary schools have just finished and the high-schools are just beginning final exams. Students are wired on caffeine, and going on little-to-no sleep. Those in their last year of a programme are moved to livid tears by the thought of not getting at least 95%. I [...]
November 09
Non-Formulaic Linking
Linking is one of those impossible-to-explain-and-more-impossible-to-understand things. I see a lot of papers with red scrawls beside the beginning of each paragraph saying “Link!” My students often have no idea what the teacher or professor means. Draw chains? Linking is connecting one thought to another. In formal writing, linking must be done smoothly, so the [...]
October 12
Weird Red Editing Marks
When your (utterly brilliant) paper is handed back to you, are you filled will trepidation? When you peek through your fingers to look at the paper, does it take you another half hour to understand what the professor or proofreader thought of it? Does it look like a bunch of aliens stepped in red ink [...]
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I'm Sheila van den Heuvel-Collins. Currently, I am the primary blog
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