Discussion Week 5

I have learned a few things about my communication skills, and one of the major lessons is that I have a great ability to convey and share ideas and feelings more freely. I like to express myself, and this is what makes my communication skills top-notch. However, I realize that I am not perfect because I still make major mistakes while drafting communication materials, such as deciding what to do at the last minute. This is often a setback since it reduces my chances of revising the message drafted, and this might lead to major errors, some of which could have been avoided if I had made the draft earlier enough.

The novelist John Irving said, “Half my life is an act of revision,” implying that his life was not perfect and he made mistakes that he came to learn from and make amends in his life. Based on this, I have had a positive attitude about revision, not seeing it as a punishment but as a way of learning. What I think, assume, claim, and say, should change is I continue learning from the course materials, life experiences, as well as outside sources. Nobody is perfect, and every now and then, we need to look back and see the mistakes we have made in our lives in order to correct them and make amends. Large-scale changes to your ideas demonstrate that you know something now you may not have known before, and this is the most important aspect of revision.

Chapter five provides the ten principles of power editing, and there are various that I find helpful in my editing. For example, give it time, give it some space, edit in successive stages, use grammar and wording tools, and finally, proofread. These principles are helpful as they allow me to edit my documents well enough, minimizing grammar mistakes while avoiding procrastination. However, it is difficult to follow all these at times, and I finally find myself using the grammar and wording tools. I plan to use these principles to enrich my editing skills in the future.

Response

Hello James!

Giving it some space is one of the best ways to edit your papers. In this case, you can put an important document aside for some time, and this will provide you with an opportunity to identify errors and thus help you to make some technical changes that will help your paper come out in good shape. However, I would not advise you to continue procrastinating as it may reduce the time to identify errors in your work, and this will lead to submitting error-prone papers.