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ELA 5: Revising vs. Editing 1389 Views
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Description:
You may think that you can edit out a major element of your essay, but technically you'd be wrong. Technically , editing is only for technical corrections. Anything bigger and you'll need to break out the revision pen, which is located conveniently next to your editing pen on your writer utility belt.
Transcript
- 00:04
[Coop and Dino singing]
- 00:13
So you’ve probably heard of revising, right?
- 00:15
It's that thing you do when you edit your work.
- 00:17
But then what’s editing? …Is it…when you revise…? [Boy looking confused]
- 00:21
Ooh, gotcha there.
Full Transcript
- 00:22
But never fear: if you’re having a hard time figuring out the difference between revision [Lion photograph]
- 00:26
and editing, we've got your back.
- 00:28
Just call us Shmooper Revision…Editing…Hero… [Shmooper revision hero flexes arms]
- 00:32
…Hm. We might need to revise that superhero name…
- 00:34
Anyway. Editing is all about fixing technical errors. That means fixing mistakes in spelling
- 00:39
and grammar and checking that all the punctuation is correct.
- 00:42
Yes, it might be boring, technical work, but it's important. Good grammar is the engine [Person fixing a car]
- 00:46
that keeps writing going, and editing helps keep the engine running smoothly. [Man driving a car and smoke puffs out of the hood]
- 00:51
Choosing not to edit is basically asking for your writing to break down on the freeway.
- 00:55
No bueno...
- 00:56
Revising, on the other hand, changes the content of writing. [Dino discussing revising]
- 00:59
It's a little more artsy-fartsy than its cousin, editing, and it requires you to really think
- 01:04
about your work and how it can be improved. There are lots of things you can do when revising.
- 01:08
You can always add or change details so that your descriptions are even more….well…
- 01:12
descriptive!
- 01:13
After all, what's more interesting? A flower…or an intoxicating wine-red rose? [White flower transforms to a red rose]
- 01:18
Dialogue is also a good candidate for revision. After all, your characters should sound like
- 01:22
real human beings, right? [A couple on a date and mans face falls off revealing a robot]
- 01:24
Checking for repetition is a good idea, too. If too many sentences start the same way,
- 01:28
you're going to put your reader to sleep.
- 01:30
Checking for repetition is a good idea, too.
- 01:32
…Heh. Gotcha.
- 01:33
And sometimes, sentences can run a bit long, and the revision process can help us come
- 01:37
up with shorter, more elegant versions of those sentences that are kind of long, but
- 01:41
still trying to be a good sentence, despite their length, because even though they're
- 01:44
lengthy, they have lots of worthwhile information, and… [Rubber rubs out segment of sentence]
- 01:48
…See what we did there? Consider the following paragraph.
- 01:53
On a technical level, it's A-OK:
- 01:55
the spelling, grammar, and punctuation look great, so it doesn't need
- 01:58
any editing. It could, however, benefit from some revising. [Man crying while on a mobile phone]
- 02:01
Let's check our revision tips, and see if any of them would be helpful. First, how are
- 02:05
the descriptions? " His tears were big and wet and all over his face" is pretty clumsy
- 02:10
as far descriptions go.
- 02:12
So let's change that to something like: "Salty tears slid down his face."
- 02:17
Now, the dialogue. This character seems to talk a lot more like a robot than a human being. [Man using mobile phone and face falls off]
- 02:22
Simple things like changing "Do not" to "Don't" and "I am" to "I'm" go a long way in making
- 02:26
spoken lines seem a lot more conversational. Unless your character is a robot…
- 02:30
then all bets are off. [Robot talking on a mobile phone]
- 02:32
And what about repetition? We've got a lot of "and"s hiding out in the last sentence,
- 02:35
so we'll want to deal with those. Plus, the sentence is pretty long, so we might want
- 02:39
to use the fourth tip and trim it down.
- 02:41
Let's try breaking up the little bits of action, giving each of them their own sentence, and [action parts of sentence highlighted yellow]
- 02:45
trying as hard as we can to avoid repetition. We might end up with something like:
- 02:49
"He waited for her reply. He sat down, the phone still to his ear. Nothing."
- 02:54
After our revision process, the character still isn't having a very good time, but at
- 02:58
least the paragraph's feeling a lot better. So revising and editing are two very different [Two beasts walking together]
- 03:02
beasts, but they're nothing that Shmooper Revision Editing Hero can't defeat! [Beasts fighting Shmooper Revision Hero]
- 03:06
Seriously…we gotta work on that name…
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