Yesterday, I went to a writing workshop, sponsored by the Washington College writing center, about sentence structure and editing and improving your syntax.
They handed out a packet with writing rules and tips and on the front was a picture of a speech covered in editing marks. It was not until we got into discussion about editing and syntax that we learned the picture was of President Obama’s speech for the Healthcare program. This should not have taken me by surprise because obviously the President did not just come up with his speech out of the blue, but the fact that he, too, had to go through the same editing and writing process that we did put the process in perspective.
I always assumed that after college, I would be done with the essays and editing. Sure, pursuing a career in environmental science may require less writing than a business profession, but I realized that no matter where I go or what I do, writing and editing will be beneficial skills in any career.
We learned about complete sentences and sentence fragments and ways you can check your writing. We also focused on sentence conjuctions, ways to make your writing more rhythmic, and nomalizations. Most of these topics seemed like review for me, but when we talked about nomalizations, I think I really learned something.
Nomalizations occur when you make one part of speech into a noun. I did not realize that too many nomalizations in a sentence can make the sentence choppy and confusing. How you ever read a sentence and then had to read it again and again before you understand what it is saying? Yah, I would always come across these sentences when editing my paper and I could not understand why the sentences were not making sense when they technically said what I wanted to say. Well, I found my answer and now when I come across those sentences in my next paper, I know to rearrange the words to make the sentence less complicated.
At the beginning of the workshop, we were told that editing was an ongoing process and I remember wondering how we would ever perfect our writing if there is always going to be something wrong with it. I think I realize now that even though we may not be able to perfect our writing, editing our papers helps us to refine what we want to say and perfect our arguement. So I may never be able to write the perfect paper because everyone has a different style, but I can certainly perfect my arguement through my writing.
