After reading through all
these chapters about editing I realize truly how unprepared I was to
edit my academic papers or papers in general. Easily the most
interesting thing in all of these chapters was agreeing subject and
verb tenses. I had to read both the draft and the corrected sentence
multiple times to ensure I understood why one was correct and why one
was not. They both seemed correct half of the time and the other half
the incorrect one was written in a way I would compare to my own. I
learned a lot from just this section and the proper way to use
agreeing verb tenses in a way that taught me some of what I thought I
knew was incorrect.
I think every chapter has
some kind of lesson: from punctuation, comma splices, incomplete
sentences, subject verb agreement, etc all pertain information we
could all learn from. None of us are perfect and thus all have
something to learn. Personally I found many small flaws and gaps in
my knowledge of basic grammar that could immensely help with my
editing. I can use this to edit everything from peer review editing
to just editing between drafts. Even though most of the topics
brought up in this section are all small and seemingly insignificant
topics they all can be the final factor that brings your paper from a
good paper to an excellent paper. The paper that brings joy and
excitement to your English professor when they read your paper for
the first time.
Happy editing!
Just don't forget that it takes regular application and practice with the material in these chapters to really bring that joy and excitement to fruition!
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