As I read the supplemental reading this week I thought to myself, “Edit other people’s papers as you would want your paper edited.” I think it’s important to “keep an open mind” just like the author explained in the book.  I thought back to high school when my peer Joey would edit my paper to shreds and I would always think, “Don’t you have one nice thing to say? I just spend 6 hours writing that.” There was another girl Hannah who realized that my creation was part of me (like the author explained in the chapter) and would politely tell me what she thought would change my good paper to a great paper. I would often just ignore Joey’s comments because I did not like the way he edited my paper, but I would take every critique from Hannah and change my paper accordingly.

I tried to edit my boyfriend’s paper while remembering the four most important words in editing, “It’s not your story.” In the future, I will improve my editing skills by focusing on the editor's checklist at the end of the chapter. I will try to write more to improve my editing. I will always try to listen to the writer and own my mistakes. I will also read more so I can identify good writing when I see it. This class was challenging to me, but I feel like it was one of the most important classes I could have taken as I pursue a degree in communications.

This week I got an invite from someone on LinkedIn. It said, "Id love to collaborate with link-minded health and wellness individuals like yourself!" The first word "id" is supposed to have an apostrophe and say "I'd."

Good luck on your finals this week! I've learned a lot from you all. 

            

Week 15

While reading this chapter, I was sort of afraid to edit someone else’s paper. How will I know what to look for and what if I do mess up and turn their work into something they don’t want? I took to heart the feeling of when someone else is reading your paper. I’ve taken plenty of papers to the Writing Center and felt my heart drop when the editor started to read my paper out loud. “No, I don’t want you to read it out loud! Everyone will hear it!” I give kudos to all the Writing Center tutors, it must be a hard job editing people’s papers every day.

              This week I had the opportunity to edit my boyfriend’s English paper. It was a little easier for me to edit his paper because I am very comfortable with him, but it was still difficult because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. My biggest thing when editing his paper was trying to get him to talk about the paper, and tell me why he wrote things a certain way. I wanted to understand what he was thinking when he wrote the paper and what he was trying to get the reader or audience to understand while reading. Asking questions was my focus when editing. Not just asking why he wrote a sentence this or that way, but asking what he thought of my suggestions and how he would like to change the paper. 

Week 13 and 14

1.       Precedence

Ø  Precedence is what keeps the viewer interested and looking around the page. This is important to web design because if you can keep the eye moving around the page, the viewer will know more about the information provided on the page.

Ø  This website has great precedence because of the shapes that guide the eye around. The text in the middle is the first thing the viewer sees, and then they see the planets, and the comet leads them up to the upper right corner, which leads the back to the text in the middle. The viewer keeps moving around the page. The colors in the planets and comet also lead the eye around the page. The eye follows the light to dark colors in the big planet and then in the comet.

  Repetition

Ø  The human brain like to find patterns in anything it can, it’s just a part of human nature. When designing a website, it’s important to know that we like to see patterns, it’s appealing to the eye. Therefore, repetition is important.

Ø This website uses great repetition in a very different type of pattern. The people are the repetition as you can find the same character in different areas of the crowd. It’s appealing to the eye because it isn’t a specific pattern, but characters are repeated through the crowd, and the eye tries to find those repetitions.

Week 11

You guys, I thought this week's assignment was amazing. I didn't see any stand out bad headlines in my day to day life, so I decided to take my luck to Google. Does Google every disappoint? I have to share these with you guys.






Isn't this so too good?                                                                                                                         






I saw so many more but will let you guys go on your own to see how awesome they are. I think that it's so easy for us to mess up on spelling, grammar, or punctuation but this is just too ironic. At least this one catches your eye!

Headlines can be tricky to make work, so maybe they were just short on space and needed to cut their letter count down. ;)

Blog 12

Blog 12: One Aspect of Writing Headlines

This week we study even more headlines! Headlines are probably the hardest thing for me. I would much rather write the entire newspaper than a single headline, but I gave it my best shot. I think that the most important thing to remember when writing a headline is to make sure the most important information is there. First, read the entire headline, then formulate the words to include the key words that will represent the story best. I have read so many bad headlines that are misleading and don’t include the important information. Let’s make that change!

My grammar mistake for this week has many glaring errors. First, there is a missing article on the first line. It should say “into a single PDF document.” The second mistake in the second sentence is hard to pin down because I don’t know who or what is allowed. Does MergePDF allow or does the program allow us to set metadata? I would delete “can” so there is only one verb in the sentence. The third sentence and mistake is a subject-verb disagreement. MergePDF is singular, but the verb “do” is plural. It should be changed to “does.” The fourth mistake that I see is within the parenthesis. It would be easier if it said “meanings” instead of “means” to make it clearer.

Week 12

I don't know about you guys, but I struggled with headlines! I had the hardest time working out the number of words I needed for each of my various headlines and having them make sense. It was difficult for me to get the main ideas out of each of the stories and write such a sort idea of it that would catch the eye of my reader. I guess that is just me not being able to cut off the frills of my headlines. Anyone else with me on this??

The other thing I struggled with was the breaking of the headlines. Man, I couldn't get that down. I guess my brain didn't like to see it working in that way and it wouldn't really give me any slack with it. I kept trying though and one day I am so determined to get down the concept of darn headlines!

Weeks 13 & 14

From the websites I searched through for tips on design I found so many things that stood out to me. One thing that I saw was most important to me is a clean layout. I am all about everything clean, no matter what it is. While taking Visual Communication last semester the concept of font was drilled into me. It is so crucial to have a clean font on your web design. Right when someone gets to your page, it needs to be crisp and clear of who you are and what you have going for you on your page.

Another thing that I saw from my research was the importance of colors. Consistency of colors is huge. Your company and your brand should have a set of colors, usually 3-4 that are always used. On your logo, products, and your webpage for branding. The consistency will make it so when people see those colors they automatically think of you. But making sure to keep control of our colors and not use too many in one place, wherever that may be.