Re: [AGA-mcm] Juggling

["S. Hieber" <shieber@yahoo.com>]

Imo, it's the author that has to make the big sweep before
proofing eyes try to fine tune and make corrections.
Proofers can eliminate words that obviously serve no
semantic purpose, such as "in order" in the phrase "in
order to" and changing "path of the gadren" to "garden
path" without any loss of meaning.


But heavier cutting, although painful, can be accomplished
if one careful looks for redundancies between paragrpahs,
longer-winded phrasings, introductory phrases and
interjections that can be implicit rather than expressed,
etc. Every word must carry it's weight, must add to the
meaning. The rest are merely expletives, in the normal,
non-watergate sense. But the author should be the first to
dispell the lesser of his or her linguistic progeny.

Just by rule of thumb, a full page or so could probably be
cut from the article without losing helpful content and Ben
might try that as a goal, despite how artifical it sounds.
What remains will be that which he most certainly feels is
neceassary and the terrific job he's done already will be
made even better, the concision making the language more
powerful.

And of course, always avoid passive voice, which is the
wimpiest of liguistic forms, limp in its wordy reluctance
to pronounce the subject.

You can share this with Ben if you think it would be
helpful. I cetainly do not mean to be offensive. but it
might be better coming for another.

Now, off the soap box and back to figuring out what the
heck my job is.

sh



--- Cheryl Rogers <cheryl@rightstuffwebsites.com> wrote:

> Karen Randall wrote:
> > 
> >> Quick note. Ask Ben for one last edit to eliminate
> 
> > 
> > That was my thought, too, when I read it.  I don't know
> if there's time 
> 
> Don't worry, he *wants* the help. I forwarded him Erik's
> comments for 
> approval and he respondedthat that's just the sort of
> thing he needs. 
> He's a professional doctor of pharmacology, not a
> professional author. 
> He'll get better with practice and gentle handling. I'm
> used to dealing 
> with these folks, and so are you Karen. With Equine
> Research books I was 
> dealing with horsepeople, not authors. We *made* them
> into authors. AGA 
> can do the same with Ben.
> 
> > 
> >> Send back and ask Amano for one last edit-wash ... 
> whoops,
> >> can't do that with him, can we?
> > 
> > 
> > Boy, I'd love to.  But _I'm_ not gonna tell him that...
> are you!<g>  
> > BTW, I _do_ change some of them, but only those that
> make very little 
> > sense in English.
> 
> Sorry, folks, I'm not that reticent. I'll edit anyone if
> they need it, 
> or if I don't like that hyphen there, or I need one more
> line on this 
> page dammmit, etc. Anyway, how's he gonna know? :-) But
> it doesn't come 
> up that often, because our dear Tomoko is *so* good it's
> nearly seamless.
> 
> Cheryl
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