‘One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence
seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when
we are half-asleep, ‘Hammer your thoughts into unity’. For days I
could think of nothing else and for years I tested all I did by that sentence
[...]” William Butler Yeats (cited in Frank Tuohy, Yeats 1976, p.51 )
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Revising is discovery learning,
especially when you
HAMMER YOUR THOUGHTS INTO UNITY
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Paris Review: How much rewriting do you do?
Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending to A Farewell To Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.
Paris Review: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that stumped you?
Hemingway: Getting the words right
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TURN IN YOUR REVISED COPY WITH THE ORIGINAL VERSION (THE ONE WITH MY COMMENTS) IN A FOLDER, ALONG WITH
[1] A NEW SELF-EVALUATION OF THE ORIGINAL VERSION ACCORDING TO THE THREE CRITERIA OF WORD CHOICE (W) , CONCISENESS (C), AND PUNCTUATION, NOW TAKING INTO ACCOUNT MY EDITS OF THE ORIGINAL.
ASSIGN A NUMBER FROM 1 TO 7 FOR YOUR GENERAL PERFORMANCE IN EACH CATEGORY. ALSO, LIST THE PROBLEMS YOU HAD IN EACH CATEGORY AND THE NUMBER OF TIMES THAT PARTICULAR PROBLEM WAS NOTED BY ME.
[2] IF YOU CAN, FOR CONSIDERABLE EXTRA CREDIT, DO THE SAME FOR P1, P2, AND P3, PROVIDING NOT ONLY THE SELF EVALUATIONS BUT ALSO THE ORIGINALS OF P1, P2, AND P3 WITH MY COMMENTS ON THEM.
NO REVISIONS WILL BE CONSIDERED WITHOUT THE SELF-EVALUATION DESCRIBED IN [1]
IN ADDITION,
1a. All your changes must be highlighted somehow in the final, revised copy, by underlining or font changes or highlighting with a color pen, or …..
1b.
Do not just “correct errors” or "infelicities" that I have marked:
the idea is to improve all your
sentences. (see Hemingway's comments above.)
1c. Never just delete a
troubled phrase, fragment, or sentence, unless “economy” is specified as
the problem. Do not write around the problem: tackle it directly. You learn
nothing by avoiding the learning process. Find a better word, phrase, or
sentence. Penalty for just deleting or writing around words marked for change:
-10 pts. each occurrence.
Let
me repeat, ALL CHANGES, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, MUST BE HIGHLIGHTED IN THE
HARD COPY OF THE REVISED ESSAY. IF THEY ARE NOT HIGHLIGHTED YOU WILL
NOT GET CREDIT FOR DOING THEM.
Notations:
-If you add a lot of new material in one unit you can just draw a vertical highlight in margin rather than highlighting each sentence.
-If
you omit a word or words just highlight the spot and write "word(s)
omitted" in
the margin.
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