Meeting the Criteria

At first glance, when looking at the articles on Michelle Citron and Marshall McLuhan there are some noticeable differences that stand out. When looking at the appearance, it is easy to note that McLuhan’s bibliography is much more thorough than Citron’s. The structure of the McLuhan’s article has more parts to it.  Although both pieces talk about the person’s work, McLuhan has a much more detailed description under each of his major works. Citron is lacking the support to all of the claims and facts being made. In regards to references, McLuhan’s Wikipedia page has a lot more going on for it. It gives us credible sources to fact check which causes me to believe that the information being portrayed on screen is accurate, whereas in Citron’s article, I question whether or not everything being said is. She has some sources to back up the statements, but her article is still left vague. I think due to the article being on Wikipedia, both McLuhan and Citron’s pages follow a similar tone. They are informative and unbiased. Another key point that came to notice was the use of illustration. In McLuhan’s page there are two images used. First is a picture of McLuhan and the second is a street sign with his name on it whereas Citron’s page has no images.

Henry Sidgwick’s two biographies have very different feels to them. One is from Wikipedia and one is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Each article gives a description of Sidgwick but the Wikipedia is very undeveloped. I get a brief sense of what makes Sidgwick important, but nothing too detailed. The structure of the Wikipedia page only gives us a short biography and the names of a few of his works but don’t go into any specifics.  There are no images used in the Stanford piece, and the only image on the Wikipedia page is a image of Sidgwick himself. I don’t think either biography really uses images to its fullest potential. The Wikipedia article, though in need of work, follows the idea of staying unbiased. It talks about Sidgwick as a person to look at whereas the Stanford article strays from unbiased a little, but for the most part gets back to being unbiased. For example, “Henry Sidgwick was one of the most influential ethical philosophers of the Victorian era”; this comes off as being biased. Who says he was one of the most influential ethical philosophers? Both biographies have a list of references, but the Stanford one has a more detailed and more extensive works cited. This allows us as viewers to find the piece as credible. If I were to use a biography as a source for a paper, I would use the Stanford one because it gives me the most factual looking information.

From Wikipedia, I have chosen the article titled Hey Jude, a song written by the Beatles. I think for the most part, it fits the FA criteria. It appears to be well written and thorough, well researched, neutral and stable. It has a lead that describes the song and gives detail about what the rest of the piece will be on. It gives us a solid structure of the song as well as the charts it hit its highs on. It is all backed up with sources which gives it solidity and an accurate description. It stays on topic and gives us an image of the record and the Beatles. They follow the concept of “No Original Research” because they have taken notes and numbers from other people and have created a piece combining other people’s research. For image use, they follow the criteria by citing the image they use back to the original source and give a description. Verifiability is in play here because we are able to check the sources being used to represent the song in order to make sure that they are credible. The article does a pretty decent job at meeting the criteria that is a Wikipedia article. It could still use some work, but it does stand pretty solid at current time. 

Generally, we Over-Simplify

We live in a society where oversimplification has taken a toll. Everyone is always looking for the easy way out. There is no challenge left and our strive is being affected. We see oversimplification in all aspects of life. We live and breathe it because it is in our nature to create it. I do it, you do it. It just happens.

“In personal relationships…we learn to ‘read between the lines’” (Lazere, 247) which exemplifies another form of simplification. We tend to in life cut corners which allows for less conversations leaves room for more assumption. The example give by Lazere in context with this statement is the idea that we see a person, we ask to sit down, we have an insinuated openness for conversation. We look at the ring finger on the left hand and factor if someone’s single or married and we begin our conversation based on symbols and body language and presumptions rather than starting a conversation with a clean slate.

Hand in hand with oversimplification comes overgeneralization. It’s just another means of jumping the gun and not going in depth enough to get a strong perception of something. We don’t do the digging into the facts that could help to make us more knowledgeable. We tend to come up with a conclusion about a group of people based on what one person does and every similar person to that individual will be forever established in that generalization. “We over generalize when we draw a conclusion about all the members of a class or things or persons or cars or computers or podiatrists on the basis of a very limited sample.” (Corbett and Eberly, 124)

 “We speak of an ironic sense of life, referring to a mind-set that appreciates the ironies that pervade every kind of experience; that mind-set is essential to critical thinking, reading, and writing.” (Lazere, 248)  Irony ties into this whole spectrum of overgeneralization and oversimplification in that we have been raised and taught is in us and we follow it because we are in that “mind set”.

Overall, after reviewing the two articles Oversimplification and Citizen Critic, I have come to the justification that our society runs on the idea of just getting by and not exerting the time or care for breaking things down and learning more. We love to simplify at any cost and without this changing, we will continue to do it and it will continue to progress. 

An Editor's Complex

BACKGROUND

A piece of writing can tell you anything. But what happens if we move the sentence structure around or add punctuation? The entire piece can develop a completely new meaning with the slightest change. To all you new writers and editors out there, this is for you.

ABSTRACT

. In the world of writing, editing isn’t limited to one way. It can depend on what the message is that a person is trying to get across to the audience. This is why an editor needs to be especially careful when adding to or changing a piece of work. One wrong step and the entire piece can be distraught. The type of genre a person is writing in can also affect the way an editor looks at a piece. Now I’m sure by now you are thinking that everything I’ve told you is common sense, but the reiteration is to express the importance and impact that editing can have on your directed audience. And by now I’m sure by now you’re wondering what the point is. The point is that editing is an important aspect of any piece of writing. If something is edited incorrectly, it could distract the audience from the understanding they should be arriving at.

INTRODUCTION

So when should we use editing? Is it something that occurs when we want to move something around just because we feel like it, or is there a real purpose? How do we use editing to the fullest potential and how does it affect the authors as well as the readers?

WHAT IS EDITING?

Editing is also a means of taking out unnecessary information and taking out information that may cause a piece to be seen as not credible. A strong example of this at work is the website Wikipedia.  The entire purpose of this website is to allow editing from the entire public. Each topic may have a little or a lot of information, but the question is how do we know what people are editing can be seen as credible.  In Hood’s Editing out Obscenity, they make a point to mention that when editing in your own information, you need to make sure that you have a credible source to back it up. Because Wikipedia is so easily accessed, it is important to have these websites be as accurate as possible because many people are seeing the information in this website because when you type into Google, Wikipedia is usually the first source to pop up. So it’s the job of editors like you to improve the websites and the sources.

Editing can be done in a positive or negative way. Editing can cause a misrepresentation of an original idea or intention, but it can also improve the accuracy and credibility of a piece of work. Another important point I think we should play close attention to is that editing isn’t merely limited to a piece of writing. It can expand to a theory, a piece of art, or even an image or video.

FORMS OF EDITING

Now think back to all of the elections. The first thing that comes to my mind is all of the political campaigns that are mainstreaming television as a presidential election approaches. Often, what you will see are many misguided commercials that are highlighting a particular candidate in a certain light and that candidate will shed a negative light on the opposing candidate by possibly editing out certain things he have said and twisting it into a certain light. Also, with the abilities that technology gives us, we can make so many changes and alterations to art, videos and images. Programs like photo shop can allow the editing of anything. For instance, if I wanted to change the face on the Mona Lisa or put a human head on a dog’s body, I can instantly edit it with a few clicks. Now it isn’t strictly limited to only art. A recent edit that has become popular on the internet would be the remake of the Taylor Swift trouble music video. Some editing genius thought to put a goat screaming into the music video and is causing laughs around the country. So as you can see, editing is easy to do and very accessible.

BECOMING AN EDITOR/ WHEN DO WE EDIT?

Editing is one of the most important aspects of writing. But the hard part knows when the right and wrong to be editing something is. It’s the concept of picking your battles. This relates to political correctness as well. Political correctness (PC) is “a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts, and, as purported by the term, doing so to an excessive extent.” So it is extremely important that when editing in any aspect, to be sure not to create any political bias and cause a piece to be distraught.

Every genre can be looked at differently, but it all comes down to one simple word; Responsibility. As an editor, you become responsible of the work you are editing. Your name may not appear on the work, but if the editing is done poorly it reflects poorly not just on you, but on the original author. This is why it is imperative to choose your battles wisely, and not make changes without careful consideration before going red pen crazy. “When you take on a book, you have to answer to yourself why you’re doing it and be willing to live with the consequences.” (Wolf, 230)

­­HOW DO WE EDIT?

            When editing, often what can happen is that if it is a piece of your own you will make changes you maybe didn’t see at first, but when it’s somebody else’s work, what you look for is for what makes sense. It is “Language that affects the writer’s voice and thus, the reader’s interpretation: tone, the writer’s stance, or attitude toward the topic; diction, the choice of words, and point of view, the perspective from which the writer views the topic.” (Kolln, 107) If we take this into consideration, this is how proper editing can be obtained.

What is the most important to make things credible? There are rules to follow for different genres. If something is persuasive, make sure the editing keeps the piece on the original view. As an editor you cannot be bias. You need to look for grammatical errors and wordy sentences, not add in your opinion. Staying objective is important for any editor. This all goes back to political correctness. For a quick example, Wikipedia follows its own rules in the editing sphere. At any given time, because of Wikipedia’s open editing policies, thousands of peoples are reading and editing a single topic. Because of this, it is important that all “editors” remain unbiased. Because of this open editing, and editors work will never be done on this website. “Because they are publically accessible, Wikipedia entries require reading that takes the process, their means of production, into consideration. Reading that does not misreads a finished version for a text still in progress. A finished version of a Wikipedia entry exists only in theory, however; since entries are rarely locked or tagged “read only” a reader can take on the role of an editor at any time, thereby updating, fussing with, or otherwise adulterating and entry that have remained stable for a while.” (Hood, Explanation in Process)

CONCLUSION

            As an editor, you have many responsibilities. You become responsible for the comprehension and readability of a piece and you make it ready for publication. Without you, pieces would be a jumble of grammatical errors and lengthy sentences. So as an editor, take your role serious because it affects every person who reads something. If you follow all of these steps, you can’t go wrong in the editing field.

APPENDICES 

Hood,Carra. “Editing Out Obscenity.” Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy. Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, 2007.

Kolln, Martha. “The Writer’s Voice.” In Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices Rhetorical Effects,Fifth Edition. New York: Pearson,2007. 107-123. 

Wolf, Wendy M. “Editing Nonfiction: TheQuestion of ‘Political Correctness.’” Editors on Editing: WhatWriters Need to Know About What Editors Do, Third Edition. Ed. Gerald Gross. New York: Grove, 1993. 229-242.