s In The Closet.

Free Essays on Skeleton\'s In The Closet. Skeletons in the closet It is the year 2112 and the incurable ‘kills all’ disease plagues the world. The disease attacks all forms of life and has spread at such a fast rate that nobody has been able to find a cure. Scientists attempting to find a cure for the disease are more susceptible to catching the disease; this has caused mass hysteria, especially in what remains of the United States of America. People are confined to sealed buildings and old bomb shelters, as the disease has not yet been reported to pass through solid walls. The disease however can pass through cracks in walls having a devastating effect, as it wipes out the large numbers of people that have packed into the building or shelter in a matter of minutes. Human, animal and plant numbers as halved since the outbreak a few days ago, and it seems that even if people keep hiding they will be avoiding the inevitable as at this rate the disease will wipe out human food resources in a matter of days. The wacky President of what was left of the United States of America, George Bush VIII, in light of the crisis promises a large reward to anyone who would free the world from this plague. As nobody can get near to finding a cure before meeting their untimely death since the President’s announcement, President George Bush VIII upped the stakes. The President announced that he would grant the Nobel Peace Prize, fame, fortune and marriage to Super-Galactic-Model Neptula Smith, (who had volunteered for the cause as part of her Charity for the Galaxy Appeal) to the person who would rid the world of the ‘kills all’ disease. Two brothers, Fred and Bob Jones, in the ruined state of Tennessee caught word of the rewards offered for the cure to the ‘kills all’ disease and decided, seeing as they were MAD scientists to start work on the project despite the daunting fact that there was a great possibility that they would die, as had other great scientists of the day. Fre...

Editing - Definition and Guidelines

Editing - Definition and Guidelines Editing is a stage of the writing process in which a writer or editor strives to improve a draft (and sometimes prepare it for publication) by correcting errors and by making words and sentences clearer, more precise, and more effective. The process of  editing involves adding, deleting, and rearranging words along with recasting sentences and  cutting the clutter. Tightening our writing and mending faults can turn out to be a remarkably creative activity, leading us to clarify ideas, fashion fresh images, and even radically rethink the way we approach a topic. Put another way, thoughtful editing can inspire further  revision  of our work. EtymologyFrom the French, to publish, edit   Observations Two Types of EditingThere are two types of editing: the ongoing edit and the draft edit. Most of us edit as we write and write as we edit, and its impossible to slice cleanly between the two. Youre writing, you change a word in a sentence, write three sentences more, then back up a clause to change that semicolon to a dash; or you edit a sentence and a new idea suddenly spins out from a word change, so you write a new paragraph where until that moment nothing else was needed. That is the ongoing edit. . . .For the draft edit, you stop writing, gather a number of pages together, read them, make notes on what works and doesnt, then rewrite. It is only in the draft edit that you gain a sense of the whole and view your work as a detached professional. It is the draft edit that makes us uneasy, and that arguably matters most.(Susan Bell, The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself. W.W. Norton, 2007)Editing CheckpointsThe final step for the writer is to go back and clean up the r ough edges. . . . Here are some checkpoints:Facts: Make sure that what youve written is what happened;Spelling: Check and recheck names, titles, words with unusual spellings, your most frequently misspelled words, and everything else. Use a spell check but keep training your eye;Numbers: Recheck the digits, especially phone numbers. Check other numbers, make sure all math is correct, give thought to whether numbers (crowd estimates, salaries, etc.) seem logical;Grammar: Subjects and verbs must agree; pronouns need correct antecedents; modifiers must not dangle; make your English teacher proud;Style: When it comes to repairing your story, leave the copy desk feeling like the washing machine repair guy who has nothing to do.(F. Davis, The Effective Editor. Poynter, 2000) Editing in ClassA large portion of everyday editing instruction can take place in the first few minutes of class . . .. Starting every class period with invitations to notice, combine, imitate, or celebrate is an easy way to make sure editing and writing are done every day. I want to communicate with my instruction that editing is shaping and creating writing as much as it is something that refines and polishes it. . . . I want to step away from all the energy spent on separating editing from the writing process, shoved off at the end of it all or forgotten about altogether.(Jeff Anderson, Everyday Editing. Stenhouse, 2007)Tinkering: The Essence of Writing WellRewriting is the essence of writing well: its where the game is won or lost. . . . Most writers dont initially say what they want to say, or say it as well as they could. The newly hatched sentence almost always has something wrong with it. Its not clear. Its not logical. Its verbose. Its klunky. Its pretentious. Its boring. It s full of clutter. Its full of cliches. It lacks rhythm. It can be read in several different ways. It doesnt lead out of the previous sentence. It doesnt . . . The point is that clear writing is the result of a lot of tinkering.(William Zinsser, On Writing Well. Harper, 2006) The Slap-and-Pat Theory of EditingWhat I try to practice is what I call the slap-and-pat theory of editing. Almost everything thats written needs some criticism. Almost everything thats written needs some praise, or deserves some praise. So you try to mix praise with criticism. Ideally, you do it sincerely. That is, you dont praise what you really dont like; but you praise what you really do like. You dont write 12 pages of things that are wrong, without remembering to find something else you like, that is already right.(Editor Samuel S. Vaughan, in an interview with the online journal Archipelago)The Lighter Side of EditingI hate cross-outs. If Im writing and I accidentally begin a word with the wrong letter, I actually use a word that does begin with that letter so I dont have to cross out. Hence the famous closing, Dye-dye for now. A lot of my letters make no sense, but they are often very neat.(Paula Poundstone, Theres Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say. Three Rivers Press, 2006) Pronunciation: ED-et-ing