The toughest edit ever: Sarah Palin

[kegler14]

I searched and didn't find this but apologize if it's a dupe. Anyway, Vanity Fair edits Palin's speech. I edit and write for a living and must agree with them.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/07/palin-speech-edit-200907

[lapfog_1]

1. William Strunk and E.B. White are spinning in their graves so fast...

we could connect a dynamo and solve the energy crises.

[waiting for hope]

2. She was a journalism major ....

:rofl:

[calimary]

5. More of a majorette, really.

[waiting for hope]

3. Here's a page ... I picked the one with the

most marks on it ...

[sam sarrha]

4. you'll probably see her on Faux by next week... i have it V-chipped out, reported it as Pornography

to the FCC

[Twinguard]

12. Awesome!

Faux = pornography.

:rofl:

[Versailles]

6. As a former English teacher...

Those edits are absolutely correct and ANY person with a journalism degree should know most of those red edits. The green and blue ones are definitely less "easy" to see edits and could be somewhat forgiven or left to an editor if this were an article.

It pains me to hear/read things like this. I spent sooooo many hours trying to correct these things when I was a teacher.
- "Appreciate you all being here." -5 fragment. (I'm being kind here...usually I would give a paper back ungraded and say "fix it" before I would grade it. Fragments should never be in any writing high school level or higher)
- Starting a sentence with "Well," in a formal speech or paper?! -5 (usually corrected by month 2 in my class)
- "...know that beside faith and family,..." -1 missing comma
- "...that I could imagine." -1 passive voice in formal writing

Oh forget it...I left education, in part, to get away from this kind of aggravation! Sufficed to say, she didn't get a good grade from me - not because she is who she is, but because the writing is horrid. If I were a member of the journalism department at her Alma Mater (the one she actually graduated from), I wouldn't go advertising it...

[tblue37]

14. This is not passive voice:

". . . that I could imagine." The subject of the clause ("I") is the agent of the action, so it is in the actve voice. Passive voice would look like this, ". . . that could be imagined" or ". . . that could be imagined by me."

See my article on the passive voice: http://essayisay.homestead.com/passive.html

In it I explain what passive voice and active voice actually are, and I also explain that sometimes the passive voice is not just appropriate, but actually necessary. The point is that such absolute rules (like never use the passive in formal writing) are not useful. A better rule is that one should never use the passive unless it is absolutely necessary--and it is seldom absolutely necessary. But that doesn't mean it is never necessary.

(I am still in the trenches, teaching college English. I must say, though, I might die of despair if I had to edit Sarah Palin's speech or writing.)

(BTW, I lived in Sumter as a child. Dad was in the Air Force.)

[Versailles]

15. Hangs head in shame...

See what a year out of the classroom will do to you!?

Actually I have no excuse, you are 100% correct and I should have read that a little more carefully and double checked myself - especially if I'm going to be snarky and "elitist". -10 to the teacher. :)


*edit*

As for the use of passive voice in formal writing, I tended to take the hard and fast rule of "don't do it" (hence the -1). As students were in my senior classes, I would begin to present situations where passive voice was more appropriate.

Also thanks for the link, I wish I'd had it for my students when I was in the classroom...good examples and clearly illustrates the voices.

[tblue37]

17. I actually have several hundred online articles, many of them

dealing with grammar and usage, with essay writing, and with teaching. That link was to an article on my Essay, I Say website. At the bottom of each article, there's a link to the homepage and to the article index for the site it's on. The homepage of each site has links to all of my other sites (ten sites in all, on a wide range of topics).

I certainly do understand the temptation to be very strict about such things at the lower levels, but the problem is that students are such literalists, and once they accept a "rule," they can't seem to modify their stance to adapt to differing contexts.

My sister teaches eighth-grade English, and she and I go round and round about this all the time. I know she's right when she says that we in college are in a different situation. We aren't teaching as many students, and their levels of competence are not as varied, so we can deal with nuances that she doesn't feel she can dare to bring into the classroom. But still, when they get to us, they are so rigid about their writing that it is hard to teach them to consider context or genre at all.

Maybe there really is no way to smooth the transition between junior high and high school writing on the one hand and college-level writing on the other, but I really do wish there were.

[Versailles]

19. Teaching English

I honestly believe it is the most difficult subjects to teach. There are so many different styles of writing and literature that it becomes nearly impossible to cover it all in the course of year. It almost felt as though I was often teaching more than one subject - literature, grammar, writing, and speaking to name the biggies.

I've always hated the fact that in lower education English classes were traditionally the only classes where writing was taught. I firmly believe that the transition between the levels of writing could be easier to achieve if, for example, position paper writing skills and approaches were taught in history class or research papers were taught in science class. I would have preferred to focus on a select few types of writing and refining the papers taught in other classes. I think this would give English teachers the opportunity to spend more time on the revising steps and help students to learn the some of the caveat's to the rules.

I have always had some pretty strong opinions about changing the methods and approaches of education. I guess that's why I only managed to last 8 years. I never fit in in any of the schools I worked at as my methods and ideas for education were a little too different for their tastes, especially with the pressures that NCLB brought on.

[boppers]

7. OMG.

That was painful. Just.... painful.

[greenbriar]

8. and my god, did this woman graduate

jebus my 8th grade students that are ESOL write better than that


what a dumbass

[greenbriar]

9. almost every sentence starts with and

this woman is insane

[upi402]

10. She's a Republican. I think that must be a prerequisite

Or pure evil. That may be a qualification too.

[greenbriar]

11. she doesn't even know the correct history of how her state

came to be?



good god, this is so painful

[Alcibiades]

13. At least we now know why she got the nod from McCain

In her own words "John McCain tapped me."
:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[Iggo]

18. Yeah, that's been bothering me since I first heard it. (n/t)

[snot]

16. And that's just fixing the obvious factual and grammatical errors, w/o

beginning to address the REAL substance of how to spin the damb thing – I greatly doubt they'd have sent it to the factual/grammatical monkeys before they'd figured out something more coherent re- the spin.

[XemaSab]

20. Time for a kick

:D