Re: OT: Books on writing?

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

flash wrote:
> The limitation of self-editing is that so
> long as you are still explaining it only to yourself, you may think you
> have explained it well, but only because you already think you
> understand it. When you hear what someone else has understood of it
> based on what you've written, then you see where you've chosen the right
> words and where you haven't. And that's what an editor is for.
Absolutely true. Some editing can be done by oneself if the
writer is also an editor (or a grammarian). But for this aspect
you absolutely MUST have another eye. If I'm writing for
publication, I WANT someone else to at least read through the
piece. (Of course, often the problem is simply that I've
forgotten that nobody nowadays has read anything written before
he or she was born, and I refer to Bobby Burns or World War I,
and get "Huh? Who he? Whazzat?")
Another argument in favor of editing or revising as you go is
that unless you can schedule a fairly large hiatus between
readings, each time you reread, you catch fewer an fewer errors.
Not because there ARE fewer, but because you're seeing what you
meant to write, not what you did. Here's an example: the
following sentence had been seen by several competent copy
editors; I looked at it Sun. afternoon and saw one mixed
metaphor. Then I looked at it again this afternoon, and saw a
whole torrent of them.
Adobe upgraded and relaunched (!) its entire family (!) of
software tools (!) that have become the backbone (!) of today's
copyediting and production pipeline (!).
>
It requires teaching them the difference between a ball and a
strike. And so proper schooling should teach students the
rudiments (at least) of English grammar.
Speaking of Dorothy L. Sayers, she wrote a marvelous essay ("The
Lost Tools of Learning") seriously proposing to reinstitute the
trivium as the basis for elementary education.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx