George Orwell

In this blog, George Orwell emphasizes the way that the English language is deteriorating. He points out all of the common flaws that were made in writing during his time. George Orwell mentions how people become sloppy and careless in their writing, which only leads to more of a collapse in the writing, then an improvement. Another important thing that he tells us about is the way that people try to use long and sophisticated words to make their writing seem more intelligent. George fells that the best way to write is using simple compact words that everyone can understand. This way, the writing is clear and to the point; no repeating of ideas or wordy sentences. He believed that following those rules would make writing flow better and be more understandable for the reader. I agree with everything that George Orwell argues in this paper especially the fact that the imitation of the bad habits that people make are the cause of the collapse of writing, which also ties into the downfall of politics and the economy. I also like how he mentions that if a person can think more clearly about their writing than they will be able to overcome the bad habits they have created. I feel that if George Orwell were to see the way writing has evolved from his time until present day, he would be very surprised. Nowadays people tend to use larger words to make their writing seem more sophisticated and intelligent. Also, I feel that people of this time make more bad habits and seem to become complacent with just being average.

George Orwell - Blog #3

In his writing "Politics and the English Language", George Orwell makes it clear that the English language has become ugly and distasteful. Not because our language is vulgar, but because English should be more simple and easier to understand. By using large words which sound much more intelligent, the writer is often losing the reader in sea of words we do not know the meaning of. I agree with Orwell's view, even though I am guilty of the same writing style that Orwell dislikes. When I write, I sometimes find myself substituting average words with words that sound much more intelligent. Although I feel more pleased with these more complicated words, I forget that I may be losing my reader with them or maybe not making sense at all. I feel that if Orwell was to look at writing today, his feelings would be similar because not much has changed in terms of some writers using large, difficult words which lose the reader. Overall, I think Orwell makes a valid point which many modern day writers should consider next time they pick their pen up.

George Orwell- Blog #3

As I first began to read Orwell’s article, I instantly disagreed with his thoughts towards his belief on the English language. I believed that he was just simply targeting it out of his anger towards his opinion that which many writers were careless towards their writing, putting in less effort than necessary. Due to the “bad influence” from the political and economical language, Orwell states that the English language is filled with bad habits which triggers it all. He wants to make it clear to us that as we read the five examples he has chosen, that they are not the worst. He criticizes the work just to make more comments towards the ugliness of these “average” pieces of writing.

Orwell states later in his article, “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.” By this statement, he is inferring that as writers of the English language, we should not be ugly writers and know how to be a better ones. He is contradicting himself in a way by saying that the English language has adapted to more of an ugly form but as inaccurate writers, we should know what we are doing wrong.

In today's day and age, I believe that Orwell would consider the English language even more inaccurate than he believed back in 1946. It is only a given that as the years precede, that the English language is just going to continually adapt to its current society and environment.

George Orwell

At the beginning of the article, George Orwell begins talking about how bad we have made the English language, and how it is not impossible to fix it, just tricky. He says that the reason the English language is bad now is because of our misuse of metaphors and fancy words as an attempt to impress others. While I agree that it makes the English language look bad when people continually butcher the meanings of fancy words to try to sound smart, I disagree with his comment, “The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.” By stating this, Orwell is saying that there is still hope for the English language as long as someone is willing to put in the effort to correct it. I don’t believe it would ever be possible for someone to completely change how everyone communicates. People nowadays have been in the habit of using the same bad English, as Orwell describes it, that I don’t think it can ever be reversed. Especially nowadays with how popular slang words and “text language” are, I think it would be impossible for one individual or even multiple people to change that for everyone. I believe that if Orwell were to write the same thing today, he would be much more dissatisfied with the English language and how improper it has become, rather than too proper.

What’s an English Language? - By Doug West

What’s an English Language?

I have a firm grasp on the Anglio Saxion based English language complimented by a plethora of common English sayings and phrases, and I am a human dictionary when it comes to word lexicon. No, I’m kidding. The quality of the use of the English language has been deteriorating since 1946. I’m not even sure if my first sentence makes any sense and I looked up all of those words on Google. If Microsoft Word did not have spell check, half of the words on this paper would be spelled wrong. Some examples of the English language deterioration can be found in internet or cell phone communication. “I less than three you.” Also known as “I <3 u” or “I heart (love) you”. In the effort to make texting and typing as simple and efficient as possible, the art of writing a sentence with correct grammar and spelling has disappeared. As another example, I will break down and analyze the following text message I received not too long ago: “OMG… MY BFF Jill! J”. George Orwell would have a heart attack reading this text message. There is no sentence structure, two cases of acronyms, three periods used improperly as a sentence break, “MY” should not all be capitalized, and a smiley face to express emotion. This form of communication, known as “text messaging”, is destroying the English language. Texting is normally associated with teenagers, but I beg you to think again. My mother and father over the last couple of years have caught onto the text messaging culture and now text message just about the same way I do. Our generation has created a texting and messaging language that is highly efficient, but defies all the laws to the English language. If George Orwell was alive today he would say that our generation has destroyed the art of writing.

George Orwell Nick Lutz

The author of this essay, George Orwell, opens the article by stating that English is bad. He puts it in a very short but precise way. What he means by bad is that the way our language is right now needs to be improved. Civilization reflects in our language, and therefore language needs to be on the incline instead of the decline. This essay was written over fifty years ago, and still believe that language is becoming worse. In everyday conversations there are so many grammatical errors that people do not even notice. These errors reflect in writing as well. Since most of us write the exact way we talk there are bound to be too many errors to even count. To try make formal writing better the main thing people do is try to "dress" the essay up. I know even in my writing I find myself trying to make and essay sound better, when in fact the essay is just becoming worse with the use of useless words. One of the greatest examples in using pointless words is in political speeches. Politics believe they are persuading the audience with big words, but they are merely just confusing them. I believe two of the most important things that George Orwell points out is,"Never use a long word where a short one will do, and never use passive where you can use active." If maybe even one of theses rules are used everyday by people then I believe our language would improve greatly.

George Orwell

Orwell states, "prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house." I think this is something that has not changed over the years. I can relate to this because I have read papers, especially in high school, where students have used large words in place of smaller, easier to understand words just to make themselves sound smarter in their paper. Also, if you listen to a political leader give a speech, it is often hard to follow because they have used words in it that I believe the average American would not know the meaning of. I think they do this to sound more intelligent because Americans want someone smart leading the country. Orwell says, "In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing." I believe this statement is true in our time also. George Orwell gave some advice saying, "Provavly it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations." I probably enjoy reading things that are fairly easy to understand and can see it in my mind. I feel like the same is true with most people. I find it easier to enjoy reading anything if I can either picture it vividly in my mind, or picture myself in that situation. Orwell states some rules near the end of his writing. These rules are simple to follow, and I think if you are following these rules when writing, the reader will be able to enjoy your writing more.

George Orwell

George Orwell begins his argument with the idea that all of the bad habits in the English language start with foolish thoughts. He explains that the effectiveness of one’s writing has to do with the clarity of one’s thoughts. I believe that he pretty much covers everything prevalent at the time he was writing this criticism of the English language. He really goes in depth about how sloppy people get with something as simple as communicating. Human beings express themselves through words every single day, so one would think that every person in the world have mastered the skills of speaking and writing by now. I agree with his statement, “It is often easier to make up words of this kind than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.” He is basically saying that the use of creative language and intellectual wordage of phrases is dead. The English language allows one to become extremely lazy, while still being able to get his/her point across. It’s a shame that people aren’t able to communicate to the best of their abilities solely because they refrain from taking risks, and stick to simple statements. If this article were to be published in this day and age, I think he would have an entire page about the upcoming and use of technology to enhance one’s writing abilities. There is nothing more frustrating to the use of slang or abbreviated words in because of technology and instant messaging. Technology can be a good thing but people rely on spellcheck to keep them from having a poorly constructed paper, and tell them when the sentence is a fragment.

George Orwell

George Orwell was explaining how people ruin the english language by trying to sound more convincing by using big, complex words. He gave the example, "A man may drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks." He explained how this was similar to the English language because we have incomplete ideas which leads to inaccurate language which makes us think incomplete. I very much agree with this statement. People will not fully think through their ideas which leads them to use already created statements to explain their idea. They will also try to use complex words so the reader will think they are smart when in reality their ideas don't make sense. This only leads to confusion because neither parties knows what they are talking about. If the writer doesn't know what they're trying to say how is the reader supposed to understand it. I have read many essay's in school and not understood a lot of them because the writer decided to use complex words. If the writer wasn't so worried about sounding smart, I might have been able to understand. Instead of grasping the idea, I was left in more confusion about the subject than when I started. I also agree that a lot of the words in the english language are used with a different meaning that what they were intended for. This also contributes the confusion in the english language. Orwell wrote this essay several years ago. This shows that the english language still hasn't changed and probably wont for many more years.

George Orwell Post

George Orwell is criticizing “ugly and inaccurate” modern written English. Orwell is basically saying exactly what he stated when he stated that “the great enemy of clear language is insincerity” (Orwell). He is essentially saying that the insincerity of the writer continues the downward spiral of language as people trying beating around the bush when phrasing their words. At first I did not agree with Orwell’s assertions, but as I read on I began to understand what Orwell was trying to state in his essay. Since Orwell believed that writing to hide your feelings/intentions was more accurate rather than writing to express your feelings. Poor writing habits spread from lack of confidence and writers need to get rid of these feelings and think more clearly. Writers of modern prose tend to not write in concrete terms but use “pretentious latinized style,” and he then compares a biblical text with a parody in modern English to emphasize what he means. By incorporating politicians into his speech, Orwell makes it easier to relate to our society and to think about whether speeches would be better if politicians chose to write them themselves. Because the politicians do not write the essays themselves, their essays come off as less empathetic. With this being said, people generally have a harder time believing what politicians have to say. I still think Orwell would state the same argument to this day that he did in 1946 because we are still going through the same issues. What he stated could still be applied to our English Language to this day.

George Orwell

What George Orwell is trying to say in his article is that we are making the english language ugly, by our misuse of it. By trying to use big vocabulary words to impress other people we butcher the english language, because we are not using these vocabulary words in the right context. Orwell says that we need to just use simple words to get our point across and stop trying to look impressive, or confusing to our readers. I think that Orwell would still agree with his statements today because we butcher our own language more today than we did in his time. Orwell talks about how politicians are "the defense of the indefensible." They use big words to sound more powerful to voters, and constituents but they really have no idea what they are saying because they have someone else write all of their speeches for them. How can they defend us when they can't even defend themselves?

I would have to agree with everything that Orwell says because people today think they can throw a couple of big vocabulary words into a paper and that will magically make it a good paper. The truth is that people just look more ignorant when they throw in vocabulary words because they usually aren't used correctly. People now a days mix up simple grammar errors because they are so used to typing in an instant message, or a text message, or on Facebook or Twitter, and when they do this they use the fastest spelling of a word and not the correct use. Orwell would probably be even more disappointed in the use of our language today because it is misused so commonly.

George Orwell Post

Orwell thinks that if we remove our bad habits from the English language then we will be able to think more clearly and then our politics will make more sense. When I read this I thought, “No our politicians are just idiots,” but after reading more I realized that he was right. In the first several paragraphs when he gives examples of how language is misused, I understood what he was talking about. Politicians cannot write and therefore we have no idea what they are trying to say. They misuse metaphors that are commonly known to the public, and bring up metaphors that no one has ever heard of. They also throw around words that the average person will not understand and other meaningless words that cause the reader to lose the meaning of what is being said. I agree with Orwell when he is talks about the speeches and says, “they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech.” The speeches all the politicians are giving are old and boring and there is no reason for us to listen to them. When they do know what they are talking about they say it in a way to make it vague enough that they almost don’t even chose a side they just bring up a topic. They are doing what Orwell described as, “Naming things without calling up mental pictures of them.” If politicians would just say what they mean and say it in a way that people would understand them then they might make some sense and get something accomplished.

George Orwell Politics Blog Post

“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer (Orwell, 5).” This quote from the reading made the biggest impact on me. I completely agree with it and think it applies to this century. As our government gains more power the impact it has on our lives increases. It even impacts our language as Orwell states! With big issues that need to be faced, the English language is pushed aside. This is causing a collapse in language. For example, a history teacher may overlook errors in a student’s paper as long as they understood the concepts of the class. The teacher’s main goal is for the students to learn the class material designated by the board of education, established by the government. Their grammatical and spelling errors are overlooked in order to achieve another goal. It is easy to push aside English because wither it is proper or not, the main goal of communicating can be done both ways.
Another issue in the paper I’d like to address is Orwell’s six rules. As I look back at the paper’s I have written, I’ve noticed I make many of the mistakes he says not to. This leads me to believe that the collapse of language has only decreases since 1946. Being a student I take many classes where the teachers require research papers with a certain number of words. This leads students, like me, to add in words that are unnecessary and add long words to make the paper sound professional. Orwell didn’t include this as a reason in his paper but it could be included under the government having an impact on our language.

George Orwell Blog # 3

George Orwell writes about how the English written language has become “ugly and inaccurate” in his essay, Politics and the English Language. He believed that writers in his day tried to make their work sound intelligent and bright by using big words and difficult vocabulary. However, the only problem with this is that it makes the piece of literature hard to read and understand. Orwell believes that you should substitute brainy and confusing language for one that was much simpler and to the point. I agree with Orwell in the sense that authors should make what they write direct and to the point; although, if he were to publish an article on the written language today, I do not think he would have the same perspective. Since this article was published, our language has evolved into something that is certainly simpler. I believe that people today have become lazy and only write in a very simple fashion. Articles that sound brainy and confusing are now harder to find. These days people are used to things such as texting and instant messaging. Everything is abbreviated, or shortened. I think that we are starting to get used to this kind of language and it is being interpreted into our writing. Something that should be simple, like knowing when to use “your” instead of “you’re”, is proving to be difficult to a lot of writers these days because they are so used to just sending the shortest response. I believe that Orwell’s wish may have come true but to a greater extent than what he was thinking of.

George Orwell Reading

I think that George Orwell's stance on modern writing has a lot of truth to it. His main point is how redundant and wordy writing is and how authors use longer words and confuse their audiences. It seems to me like Orwell is praising simple writing, which I think is great because you don't have to write a long essay with a ton of sophisticated words to make it "good". I think George Orwell would agree that a work more straight to the point and simple is much better. Orwell also discusses the way politicians talk and how they are not emphatic in their speech and don't really care what they are saying because they do not write their speeches themselves. Orwell suggests that if politicians wrote their own speeches, they would be more believable. I think what Orwell says is still true today... especially what he says about politicians. People generally do not believe what politicians have to say. It's rare to see a politician, who genuinely cares about what he talks. And although Orwell believes that the English language is in a bad way, bad writing is reversible by being original and simple. His guidelines are easy to follow, and he gives good advice. Orwell writes that you can save yourself from making mistakes by simplifying your English. It is important not to get too complex with what you say so that your audience can understand what you're talking about and that way you have less chances of using words improperly and looking stupid. Orwell's analysis still very much applies to writing today, and writers should pay attention to what he says.

George Orwell Post, Mick Bodenheimer

George Orwell argues that the true English Anglo Saxon language is diminishing because of its misuse. He says that our use of language in modern writing only creates “slovenliness and vagueness.” I agree with Mr. Orwell completely because it follows what I have mentioned a few times in my papers and what I have been trained to do as a writer. The simple word is always the better word. That is my opinion and I believe George Orwell would agree with that. I have seen it with classmates and even with myself sometimes that we try to pretty up our prose with fancy words that make it seem like we are true academic writers when in fact all we do is make our meaning blurred and harder to understand. I had no idea what the author in that first passage was trying to say. I read it out loud to myself a few times and still couldn’t comprehend it. Yet, we all write like that sometimes. Its what we are used to seeing. The four questions Orwell presents on page four are, in my opinion, perfect for any writer who is writing to a broad audience. Nobody wants to listen to someone rant about something that they can’t understand. Its boring and most often puts me to sleep to be honest. But something relevant and something that is creative is always more catching to the mind. To search for the right word is a quest that every true writer should be excited to venture out upon. You are aiming to create something of pure originality, not to spit up some retro metaphor or phrase that sure helps you get across your point, but then lacks being your own example. There is a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I feel like George Orwell could get his meaning across in a hundred.

Blog Post #3 - Politics and the English Language Response

" A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. "

Write about 250 words in response to the George Orwell reading. What is he saying about language? Do you agree/disagree with Orwell's assertions about language? Have you noticed any examples of a "collapse in language" he didn't mentioned?  This article was published in 1946; what might he say differently if it were published now? (due by 11:59PM on Monday 9/26)

Also, respond to two of your classmates' blog posts by class on Friday 9/30. 

Peer Editing Post

I’ve always been a big fan of peer editing! So when I heard we were going to be doing an in class peer edit I was excited! Peer editing allows the writer to get the opinion of the person who is reading their paper. The writer can see if their main point is being brought across to the reader by their reaction and recall of the paper. Along with this the writer has the peer find mistakes that the writer may have accidently cruised over. When reading a document over and over, it is likely that you will begin to read it as you think it is typed as opposed to how it is actually typed. I personally have this problem when revising my papers since I read over them to quickly. Another helpful quality of peer editing is It helps insure the paper is coherent. There is nothing worse than reading a paper that made no sense from the beginning! During class; as my paper was being graded, I learned that I needed to pay more attention to sentence structure and relating back to the thesis. I also needed to improve my place in my paper. What I mean by this is I needed to add more personal information to support the thesis. Without the peer edit I would have turned my paper in and received a poor grade. Looking at the situation in a bigger picture; I will now know what to look out for when completing my next assignment.

Project #1 Thoughts-Patrick Toohers

For my project I will be writing about a high school class that has had the most impact on my life. This class was geometry and it was taught by one of the toughest teachers in my high school. I was very afraid to take the class at first, but it was worth it in the end. At the beginning of the school year my teacher, Mr. Allen, himself thought that I would not be smart enough to do well in the class, so right from the get-go I was eager to prove him wrong. The homework load for this geometry class was overbearing and at times during the year I hated the class. When the year was over Mr. Allen went from being the meanest teacher in the world to one of my favorite teachers. He taught me that most of what you learn in school isn't really learned in the classroom. It takes hard work and discipline to put in the time out of the classroom to do homework thoroughly and study diligently. Not only did he help me in the classroom, but he also inspired me to work harder in sports. The inspirational quotes that he collected and shared with the class always gave me motivation to work harder in school and in baseball. I think that this is a great project to give at the beginning of the school year so that we can look back on important lessons we have learned already from school and how we need to use those lessons going forward at JMU.

Peer Editing

The other day when we peer edited each others papers I got a chance to see how other people's writing techniques and topics differed from mine. My partner gave me good advice and told me what I did well and what I needed to clarify and fix. It was also interesting to see how he agreed and associated with my topic. The peer editing really helped me see what I need to do in order to get a good grade on my paper.

Peer Editing- Samuel Owens

Although peer editing has proven to be beneficial to one's writing, I have always found it as a hassle. That is not to say that I would ever skip peer editing all together, but I definitely do not enjoy it. I feel that peer editing is beneficial because it allows our paper to be viewed from another persons point of view without being graded. Usually, that extra point of view will help to pick out problems that the writer's eyes wouldn't notice. I often find this helpful because I'm the kind of guy who prefers just to jot down my ideas in a rough draft without re-reading carefully enough to pick up on small grammatical errors.
Until I read Chapter 10 in the textbook, I was unaware that the techniques I demonstrate when I peer edit are actually part of a peer editing process. The only difference is that sometimes I overlook the organization step in the peer editing process. I feel that once I manage to organize papers better, my peer editing skills will be at a new level. If I was to make a change to the pyramid, I would add the importance of formatting. Proper MLA formatting in a paper is critical if one expects a good grade. Therefore, attention to proper formatting should always be taken into consideration.

Peer Editing

In my past experiences of peer editing, I had never really gotten any good feed back. Usually my teachers would put us into groups, they would read my paper, and just say it was good. This didn't give me any way to improve my papers. I would leave it to the teacher to edit it while she was grading it, which only led me to a bad grade. I think peer editing is very important because other people can see what you don't. I usually don't find my mistakes because I made them. The peer editing that I got in this class was a lot more helpful than all the past peer editing I have done. My partner gave me good suggestions that would really improve my paper. I also was pointed out to some mistakes that I would have not seen on my own. I think peer editing can be good or bad depending on who is doing the editing. I want to continue to do peer editing in this class because my first experience was very good.

Peer Edit

Usually I am not a huge fan of peer editing because nothing gets done. However, Victoria was a great partner to edit my paper. I have some bad habits that I need to change and luckily she pointed them out so I now know what to look for in my writing. It's hard to go over my own paper and look for mistakes because I know what I am trying to say! This peer editing was very useful for my rough draft and the revisions were completely necessary. I'm glad that my first college experience for peer editing was a good one because in high school, I dreaded it because personally, I thought it was a waste of time. My assumptions were proven wrong, and I look forward to my next step of this paper.

Peer editing

This is my first time peer editing, I came into class the other day of exactly what peer editing was. I was not looking forward to it in anyway because I am not very grammatical and not great at puntuations made me think that peer editing was going to be rough.
Once me and my partner switched papers, I realized that i did know more then I thought about litterature. Although I know I missed some stuff, I hope I helped my partner out and helped him write a better essay. I now look forward to more peer editing in the future because it gives someone else a chance to read your paper before the teacher does. Also i learned a lot from it because he saw things that i missed or only made sense to me. Overall I think it was a huge help and am glad we are doing it and think my papers will be better because of it.

Peer Editing- Danielle Drumheller

Before Monday's class, I had never really had any peer editing experiences. Peer editing was never a part of the learning process at my school. I didn't even realize that it was at other people's schools until Monday. But I wish that my teachers in high school would have used peer editing as a tool to teach us what to look for when revising a paper because it really helped getting feedback from someone who wasn't as intimidating as a teacher. I felt that peer editing also helped me see the project with a different set of eyes, so instead of only seeing how my topic fit the guidelines of the project, I could see how someone else used the guidelines and how it worked out for their paper.

I felt that the process I used when peer editing was similar to the process in the book. For example, I read the paper more than once in order to feel comfortable editing and revising it and also I found that it was very helpful for me to take notes while editing. However, I think that the relaxed environment that we had in class on Monday was better than a more strict environment, like the one mentioned in the book, would have been. Also, I think that one-on-one peer editing was more helpful than group editing would have been. I think that one-on-one peer editing is better than group editing because, even though I have never been a part of group editing, I thought one-on-one peer editing was less stressful and less intimidating.

Peer Editing-Patrick Toohers

In the past I did not do too much peer editing in my classes. Normally the teacher would just review the paper once, and then give it back for me to write the final copy. I wish I had been exposed to peer editing more throughout my life because it just gives the paper another angle to be looked at. In most cases different people will see different mistakes in a paper, therefore peer editing is great for getting the paper another look and finding more areas to improve upon. I think that for this first paper that we wrote the peer editing went very well. It is nice to have someone else look at your paper and recognize the mistakes that you just do not realize are there.

The way that I went about reviewing my partner's paper was by loosely following the guideline sheet for editing an essay. I read through the paper twice in search of and grammatical errors, structure problems, or detail that needed to be added. I'm pretty sure that I covered a little bit of all of those things while editing and hopefully it was of some help to my partner. I know that my partner helped point out some flaws in my essay that I could work on to make my paper more complete. Overall, I really like the idea of peer editing and not just having the teacher be the only one to edit your paper before it is handed in; I look forward to getting more into peer editing in the future.

Peer Editing and the Tiny Bird that Flew

Peer Editing and the Tiny Bird that Flew

Douglas West

There are some people that are good at cooking food. I am a terrible cook and I cannot even add milk to cereal. On the flip side there are great consumers of food like the great American Joey Chestnut who can consume sixty two hot dogs in twelve minutes. I am a great consumer of food, not a creator. How does this apply to peer editing? I am a consumer of editing advice and terrible at creating good advice, if any at all. Whatever paper I read gets very little and poor advice. Whoever reads my paper is often overloaded with work because of the plethora of mistakes I make with grammar, spelling, word choice, and other such spelling mistakes. Now with this said I would like to thank my partner for all the great corrections he or she made to my paper anonymously on this blog without mentioning Megan’s name.

In regards to book, my editing style was pretty similar to how chapter ten describes the process. First, I read the entire essay and looked for any structure mistakes and fluency of the idea the paper was trying to get apart. Second, I read the essay a second time slowly looking for grammatical mistakes. That’s just about all that I do. I am a great reader but I am not a great editor.

The only difference was how relaxed and fun the environment was. Never met this person before and I’m nervous about how she is going to judge my paper. I am going to open up on this blog and tell you my deepest secret. There is nothing more in the world that I am more self-conscious about than my writing and ideas. There I said it. As she reads my paper I am as nervous as a mother bird watching her baby bird jump off a cliff for the first time to see if it can fly. Then my partner and I start to talk about each other papers. She loved my paper! She corrected a lot of my grammar mistakes which I greatly appreciated as well. The editing process does not have to be so formal and robot like. It takes away all of the fun in the paper. Giving a friend some positive supportive advice is all a paper needs to come alive with information and entertainment. Let your words jump off a cliff and see if your tiny ideas can fly. “Words are easy, like the wind”-William Shakespear.

Peer Editing- Riley McGhee

I think that peer editing is definitely a positive activity for the class to partake in. It is beneficial to not only the writer, but the reader as well. Seeing someone else’s perspective can always help you formulate new ideas and touch up your paper. Of course, it is also always very difficult for the writer to catch his or her own grammatical mistakes, or any mistakes for that matter in his or her paper. However, when you are reading someone else’s paper, the mistakes can be glaring in comparison to your own, and they are easier to spot.

I think that other than a proof read and maybe bouncing a couple of ideas off of someone, there isn’t really much more of a need for peer editing. Any other editing work that is needed on a paper I feel can be done, and most likely will need to be done, on your own. Having someone look at your paper is most definitely a plus, but I would never be one to say that it is essential. So it being a part of the editing process as the book says is bogus in my opinion. Really any formula for an editing process is invalid because everyone has their own formula for how they edit, as we discovered in the drawing activity the first week of school.

To tie things up, I personally believe the peer editing process to be useful in my own editing process. I also feel that for the majority of students, peer editing is advantageous in comparison to a system that eradicates that step.

Peer Editing- Victoria Winkler

Peer editing is a process that has been taught since the very beginning. Memories of peer editing short picture book stories of my fellow second graders all the way back in elementary school. Even though we were just taught the very basics, it was a great place to start. As I got older and moved on to more advanced classes, editing became more sophisticated and had to be taken in more of a serious matter given writing became a more important aspect in our academic lives. Editing has become second nature and is done without even noticing sometimes. If you think about it, we are constantly editing. Whenever anything is written, it is almost always re-read or at least scanned over to check for any obvious errors or mistakes.

The peer editing process that we demonstrated yesterday in class was very relaxed in the sense that we were merely just attempting to help each other improve our writing and edit unnoticed mistakes. It was clear that we were obviously not trying to offend or be disrespectful towards the writing, just make come up with creative suggestions to improve the essay.

As talked about in the chapter 10, the editing process is very clear and easy to understand and go by. The process steps seemed to actually follow the editing process that I have been using for my many years throughout grade school. The only aspect that I probably would do different is have the editor read the essay to themselves rather than the writer read it aloud because it would definitely be easier for the editor to come across mistakes and punctuation errors that they notice.

Peer Editing Michael "Bodie" Bodenheimer

Peer editing is something that has floated in and out of my writing process throughout my high school career. Some teachers emphasized it while others stuck to personal revision and editing. In the past I have usually found it beneficial but only when working with someone who was either on the same level of writing or higher. Because giving my draft to someone who is either 1) uninformed about the topic or the style of writing or 2) not the most careful of readers doesn’t really benefit the peer editor or myself.

However, in the class editing that we did on Monday, that was not the case. My partner and I seemed to compliment each other well and were able to go back and forth on each other’s papers regarding grammar mistakes, idea clarification, as well as phraseology. It wasn’t critiquing the person it was critiquing the work. I believe it takes a level of maturity to be able to do that which is why it is most beneficial in a college atmosphere to employ this style of revision.

In comparing to the ideas expressed in chapter 10, I think our style was a little more relaxed then the steps laid out on page 275. It was merely one on one editing rather then the whole group. However, we did read over the draft completely while taking notes and were able to give well-constructed critiques as well as compliments about the writing. And going along with another idea about editing vs. revision, I think it is best to keep the peer editing groups just at editing like we did. Throwing in a revision process would only make some students feel lesser compared to others. It is ultimately up to the teacher to do those evaluations, which is why the conferences are a bonus.