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.