Substantive Editing Practice (MS 1)

My professor told us that we should keep track of our editing: our editing rate, what we learned, what we want to learn. So, here is my first post.

I was assigned to work on a book review. The manuscript was one that came through Mel Thorne's hands. The manuscript is fairly close to what Mel worked with, but he added some problems for practice.

Our first assignment was to act as if we were in the acquisitions department; we were to read the manuscript and suggest changes that the author would need to make so that we could publish the manuscript (developmental editing). It was interesting to hear what suggestions each person made to the author. I recommended he include a more informative summary, fewer examples of errors, and more general examples of errors. My classmates suggested other things: a stronger thesis statement was one of the major ones, as well as tone.

The next assignment was to do a substantive edit on the manuscript. I haven't finished mine yet, but my focus has been on shortening the review and making the examples more general. I decided that the review didn't need a thesis because I've written and read book reviews before, and it doesn't seem like a thesis is always required. Additionally, because of the way this review is written, it doesn't seem like a thesis would fit anywhere. The reviewer dives right into describing the book and then listing its faults. I didn't see this as a flaw, but as I reviewed my classmates' edits and especially Mel's work, I am considering the benefit of more structure to this manuscript by means of a thesis and headers, in addition to stronger topic sentences.

One thing I have learned so far in the difference between my work and Mel's revisions is that audience is key. Mel edited the manuscript for a very scholarly audience, who would know about the details mentioned in the review. When I edited, however, I was working the manuscript to fit a more general audience. The audience you have in mind will strongly affect the way you edit—at least it should.