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| Not all of us can pull off journalist Clark Kent's hipster glasses like he does! |
I’ve added a new chapter to my repertoire of literary adventures - copy editing for The Collegian our campus newspaper. Unfortunately this kind of editing goes against many of the principles we’ve learned during the Writing Consultant class. Though I’m trying hard and putting a lot of hours in to be honest right now I don’t think I’m very good at it! To begin with we are asked never to edit for content, it is an entirely grammatical endeavor. Though I am interested in eventually writing articles, to be candid I’ve never been a grammar Nazi or even very concerned with grammar. This new position, hopefully will be a stepping-stone to a more interesting position, but in the meantime I’ll have to learn to be a rockstar at editing. To do so might mean I’ll have to crack open the Diane Hacker books that have been sitting on my shelf and gathering dust since freshman year of high school .
One article we’ve read entitled Grammar in the Writing Center: Opportunities for Discovery and Change makes the statement that, “The teaching of formal grammar has negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in composition, even a harmful effect on improvement in writing”( Glover & Stay). This assertion is a little frightening to me as a copy editor. I think perhaps that the context of the Writing Center is important to consider alongside this quotation. My role at the newspaper is to produce the most polished and professional paper in my power. Unlike in the writing center I am working not towards the individual growth of each writer, but towards a finished product. But we’re all college students, learning from one another aren’t we? Glover and Stay suggest in their article that appropriate editing on all levels of a piece can make all the difference in helping the author become a better thinker and writer. One article that I’ve encountered which was particularly hard for me edit was also difficult to digest as a reader. I understand that opinion pieces can and should be causal, but this one while entertaining was hard to follow. Why shouldn’t editors help at least with more superficial aspects of content such as organization? I think that The Collegian should hold its editors to the high professional convention used in the real world, but should also be flexible and allow them to engage in the pieces more wholeheartedly, creating a dialogue between editors and writers to produce the best possible paper.
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