Reviewing and Editing the Writing of Others
Performance Schedule
Six three-hour sessions
Eighteen instructional hours
Or a customized schedule
Course Objective
The overall objective of this course is to help managers and editors answer the following questions:
- What standards should I apply when reviewing and editing the writing of others?
- How well do I understand these standards?
- How can I best communicate these standards to the people whose writing I review and edit?
- How is the role of a reviewer different from that of an editor?
Specific Course Goals
Participants will
- improve their understanding of the human dynamics of writing and editing. Specifically, they will clarify the relationships between writer and reader, between reviewer and writer, and between editor and writer,
- be able to apply the following writing standards when reviewing or editing the writing of others:
- maintaining a reasonable readability level
- effectively controlling the tone of written communications
- avoiding sentence structure and mechanical problems
- organizing and reorganizing the communication to best achieve its purpose
- develop an understanding of the stages of writing and the time involved in each stage.
- develop an understanding of the processes of reviewing and editing.
- be able to use standard editorial symbols.
Course Concept
Through effective reviewing, managers can help create the desired written products, motivate the original writers to attach more importance to written communication, and develop the writing skills of those writers. Similarly, editors need to develop sensitivity to the writer’s perspective and to limit changes to those that must be made. Tension between editor and writer can ultimately affect the quality of the final product. Thus, a good editor needs to know more about the writing process than just the mechanics.
The course will consist of class discussion about the human dynamics of writing, class exercises and readings about the principles of effective writing, and exercises in reviewing and editing.
The instructor serves as motivator, resource person, and evaluator of student progress.
Materials
The contractor will provide a loose-leaf binder with more than 100 pages of handouts, To Revise or Not To Revise: The Essential Guide to Reviewing Somebody Else’s Writing by Angela J. Maniak.