Chapter 5 Editing for Style Dave jOhn Engelhart

What is Style? Is this Style? Does Style need a poetic tone? Dan Jones in Technical Writing Style defines Style as “your choice of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences, and how you connect these sentences”. Style is the unity and coherence or your paragraphs and larger segments.

Three levels of Editing Broad-level: The big picture or the larger structure on revising the organization of your document. Sentence-level: editing the sentence structure and word choices of your sentences. Mechanical revisions: correcting grammar, spelling and punctuation. Think of this like a tree, the tree itself being the broad-level, the branches being the sentence level, and the Mechanical level being the leaves.

Creating Readable Style Emphasize the important points Should agents be used in the prose? –Yes, but avoid agentless prose Use appropriate tone

Important Points Nominalizations –What does this mean? A nominalization is a verb or an adjective turned into a noun. (ex: realize becomes realization) Example: The current voter registration may cause negative stipulation in the progression for a movement towards a representative democracy. Revised: The low voter registration may negatively stipulate the progress for a democracy.

Avoid Agentless Prose What is an agent? –Person or thing in the sentence that is acting What is the common progression readers see in sentence structure? –Agent –The agents need to be given a action –Active voice not passive, most agentless prose is from passive voice ActionResult

Passive vs. Active Passive Voice: the subject receives the action. Active: The subject of the sentence performs the action. Examples: –Active: Clancy articulated words of rhetorical wisdom during lecture –Passive During lecture rhetorical words of wisdom were articulated by Clancy.

Tone Standard English: –English expected and used by educated readers and writers. –Not: “Man, I don’t like them there political peoples cause they lie and stuff and we an’t not vote them in there next time. Sexist Language –Basically not displaying bias towards one gender over another for occupation, ability, behavior. –Example: The manager asked the receptionist if she completed the TPS report –Revised: The manager asked the receptionist if the TPS report was completed.

More on Tone Jargon: –Avoid the unnecessary use of jargon –Example: The business teaching professionals must be aware of the NCLB and SCANS requirements and standards by the NBEA by next conference to receive CEC for the upcoming school year.

Colloquial Language What is Colloquial Language? –Everyday spoken language or phrases –Examples:??? –Do the dirty work, knock them dead, just wing the presentation, back to the grindstone or drawing board, working the midnight oil,

Control large words and phrases Examples of words: fabricate—make, ascertain—make certain, mitigate—relieve or lessen, and facilitate—aid, help or assist. Examples of phrases: in conjunction with—with, in the event that—if, in the near future—soon, as a consequence of-- because. Example sentence: If fabricated correctly the migration of human resource personal to the accounting department from finance department should come in close proximity to a feasible requisite for our company’s efficiency goal.

Meaningless Qualifiers What is a qualifier? –A word that modifies the meaning of another word in a sentence. –Examples: –The investigation of the Universities ethics policies were more or less completed. –The result of the research was relatively close to the desired outcome from the data.

Types of Transitions Implicit: connection made through meaning. Example: The research found by Department of Transportation in Texas found drivers experience 85 percent less accidents when not talking on their cell phone. This could transition to how Minnesota should make a law for drivers not to talk on their cell phones.

Transitions Explicit Transitions: However therefore, nonetheless, also. Example: Texas found cell phones to a danger while driving however Califorina’s data supports a different perspective. There is the Given/New Principle. –This is when the writer begins with information known to the reader and ends with new information.

A couple of ethical considerations Do not suppress knowledge or data Don’t exaggerate claims or favorable data

International Guidelines Use short sentences Use explicit transitions Avoid redundancy Avoid informal style Avoid Jargon Avoid humor Use metaphors, similes and analogies with caution