With this post, I only intend to provide a link to another professional site when the process of self-editing is concerned. As a seasoned editor and writer, I still find information of this nature helpful – however many times it may appear to have been repeated.
And the Errors on Last Post’s Proofreading-Practice Text Were . . .
Here is the text in question for your convenience:
“Even among philosophers, we may say, broadly, that only those universals which are named by adjectives or substantives have been much or often recognized, while those named by verbs and prepositions have been usually over looked. This omission has had a very great effect upon philosophy; it is hardly to much to say that most metaphysics, since Spinoza, has been largely determined by it. The way this has occurred is, in outline, as follows: Speaking generally, adjectives and common nouns express qualities or properties of single things, whereas prepositions and verbs tend to express relations between two or more things. Thus the neglect of prepositions and verbs led to the believe that every proposition can be regarded as attributing a property to a single thing, rather than as expressing a relation between two or more things. Hence it was supposed that, ultimately, there can be no such entities as relations between things. Hence either there can be only one thing in the universe, or, if there are many things, they cannot possibly interact in any way, since any interaction would be a relation, and relations are impossible.
The first of these views, advocated by Spinozer and held in our own day by Bradley and many other philosophers, is called monism; the second, advocated by Leibniz but not very common nowadays, is called monadism, because each of the isolated things is called a monad. Both these opposing philosophies, interesting as they are, result, in my opinion, from an undue attention to one sort of universals, namely the sort represented by adjectives and substantives rather than by verbs and prepositions.” [Source: “Free Weekly Proofreading Exercise” at http://www.proofreading-course.com]
The Errors (underlined in the text, and yes, these are of minor nature but too often, our text gets convoluted because of them):
- “over looked” is misspelled in the original text, with “overlooked” being its correct form
- “to” should read as “too” in this context (this error is one that keeps creeping up on us way too often, and as such a culprit, it cannot be emphasized strongly enough as far as red alerts)
- “believe” is a misplaced word here, for we need its noun form, “belief”
- “Spinozer” is the misspelling of the actual name, “Spinoza”
Next week: More opportunities to practice proofreading
A New Text as a Proofreading Practice
Another sample text-based worksheet comes in for you, dear reader, to practice self-editing, which starts with a most vital step: Proofreading [Source: “Free Weekly Proofreading Exercise” at http://www.proofreading-course.com].
“Even among philosophers, we may say, broadly, that only those universals which are named by adjectives or substantives have been much or often recognized, while those named by verbs and prepositions have been usually over looked. This omission has had a very great effect upon philosophy; it is hardly to much to say that most metaphysics, since Spinoza, has been largely determined by it. The way this has occurred is, in outline, as follows: Speaking generally, adjectives and common nouns express qualities or properties of single things, whereas prepositions and verbs tend to express relations between two or more things. Thus the neglect of prepositions and verbs led to the believe that every proposition can be regarded as attributing a property to a single thing, rather than as expressing a relation between two or more things. Hence it was supposed that, ultimately, there can be no such entities as relations between things. Hence either there can be only one thing in the universe, or, if there are many things, they cannot possibly interact in any way, since any interaction would be a relation, and relations are impossible.
The first of these views, advocated by Spinozer and held in our own day by Bradley and many other philosophers, is called monism; the second, advocated by Leibniz but not very common nowadays, is called monadism, because each of the isolated things is called a monad. Both these opposing philosophies, interesting as they are, result, in my opinion, from an undue attention to one sort of universals, namely the sort represented by adjectives and substantives rather than by verbs and prepositions.”
Next week: The corrections (Please note: No error has been hinted at, which means that you, dear reader, have a clean slate to work on. Enjoy!)
Self-Help: Grammar-Check, III
Last week, the focus was on Verb-Subject-Agreement, with an announcement of this week’s focal point: Direct Objects and Prepositional Objects. As before, the intent here is to briefly review these grammatical elements of language.
Direct Objects
The first point to note in this context is the fact that not every sentence appears with a direct object in it. What to be aware of, however, when one does . . . Not much. Identify the subject and the verb of a sentence; if the subject performs an action on an object (a person or a thing), then you have found the direct object:
- My family takes a trip to the same seaside town every summer.
- My family = Subject; to take = Verb (in its base form in the sample sentence)
On which word does “family” perform the action of ‘taking’? Your answer here takes you to the Direct Object = “a trip”
PLEASE NOTE: The key concept here is that a verb MUST perform an action in order for a sentence to have a Direct Object. If a verb only indicates a “link”, then there cannot be a Direct Object in that sentence, for example, as in, “My family was always pleased with the accommodations.”
Prepositional Objects
The sample sentence immediately above, the one with a ‘linking’ verb, has no direct object (because it does not indicate an action). It has, however, a prepositional object:
- My family was always pleased with the accommodations.
The noun “accommodations” is the object of the preposition “with”; hence, the full underlined phrase makes up the prepositional object of the sentence.
The first sample sentence, too, has a prepositional object:
- My family takes a trip to the same seaside town every summer.
The noun “town” is the object of the preposition “to”; hence, “to town” makes up the prepositional object of the sentence. The words “same” (an adverb) and “seaside” (an adjective), different grammatical elements, function here as modifiers of the prepositional object.
Next Post: A sample text-based worksheet for self-editing practices
Self-Help: Proofreading / Editing
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At the risk of sounding mundane or redundant, I dare to proceed with highlighting the first few steps that are essential in the process of copy editing, each of which is an integral part of the more involved undertaking we over-simplistically call “editing”:
- Make sure to read your work aloud and to do so at a very slow pace
- Read the same work vigilantly to catch errors and do so from front to back, and then back to front
- While you read your work, record your voice (speak as slowly as you have the patience for that out-of-your-norm-pace), and then listen to the small sections of what you have recorded
- The first time, listen to details that sound out of order (specifically, how you have structured your sentences, your word choice, and phrasing)
- The second time, read the corresponding text aloud
- Then, record your voice once again with the new round of reading out of your text
- Write down what your selected work is about (a synopsis, if you so choose to label it as)
- Then create questions about the content of your work as a whole but write them at the beginning of each section
- Compare / Contrast against the fact if your text answers your own questions
- Make sure all your questions are answered
Summary
Self-editing, even if it is only to copy edit or proofread, is a process that will take more time and effort on your part than working through the same steps for someone else’s work will. Remember always to take your time and to question your own writing. You are, after all, saving yourself the expense of hiring a professional. It is still critical to have someone else – a friend, a co-worker, a family member with acute reading skills – look over your draft work when you conclude that it is finished. The logic behind this undertaking is your thorough familiarity with your own writing: If completely on your own, that intimate author-text-acquaintance presents the risk of you not being able to read what is in actuality in your text. As an outcome, you will not be in a position to catch all surface errors and / or discrepancies in that written draft.
