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Re: Editing Marks - Please Help!!!

Subject: Re: Editing Marks - Please Help!!!
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 19:24:30 -0800

janiceg wrote:

We include these marks in our internal style guide and I am always happy to explain a mark if a writer is unfamiliar with it. There's no need for them to memorize the marks if they have a handout or easy reference source to look up those with which they are unfamiliar.

And if they are willing to look up what they don't know, or to admit their ignorance about a subject that they don't know much about. Unfortunately, not everyone will do these things. After four years as a teaching assistant and another seven as a sessional instructor spent beating my head bloody trying to get people to use and understand these marks (okay, maybe I exaggerate just a little), I've come around to the position that it's more important to deliver editorial comments in a form in which they are useful to the recipients than to insist on any particular system. I'll use the standard marks if the person I'm editing understands them - and why not? They save time. But if people won't make the effort to understand them, I'm just wasting my time,. Maybe it's creeping middle-age, but I don't really care to do that.

Huh? Is there a better method and more succinct way to indicate edits that you know about?

Only better in the sense that verbose comments may be better understood. Succinct? Definitely not. With many people, the choice seems between communicating and being succinct. When forced to make that choice, I choose communication. I don't especially like the choice, but after four years, etc. beating my head bloody, etc. etc.

Also, I've been using the same marks for over 20 years -- I've never had a writer feel that they got in the way or were difficult to understand.

Maybe I've been hanging out with the wrong people. Even writers don't seem overly familiar with the marks these days, unfortunately.

I most assuredly do *not*! That was a quote from Geoff Hart, not me, and I replied in the negative to it, just as you have :->

Sorry. Apparently, I got lost in the quote within a quote. It's Friday. I'm tired. It's a couple of months to the next holiday. You know how it is.

--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7177




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References:
Re: Editing Marks - Please Help!!!: From: Janice Gelb
Re: Editing Marks - Please Help!!!: From: Bruce Byfield

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