Hi..has anyone got any tips they can share when editing and changing words .. I find it difficult and time consuming sometimes to make a sentence make sense.
when editing a long sentence sometimes the words don't flow and I try to swap them around chop and change them , then fear i have made the sentence too short...any tips on this??
Cheers,
Kat.
Tip 1. There is no single solution. :-( One thing works for one writer and another for another... and what works one day can change another... :-(
Tip 2. If you don't want to break a flow use the word that is in your head and either highlight it or change the font colour - so that you know to look at it later.
Tip 3. I try very hard to avoid using the same word on the same page - especially adjectives and adverbs. At the most i will usually only use a word twice - unless I want to use it for effect. One very helpful tool to assist in this (on a keyboard) is to cheat and use the "synonims" function.
Sometimes this doesn't work at first hit - at least an alternative word isn't the one that I am really looking for - sometimes I use a first alternative and then try again... Sometimes I never get the exact word I am looking for :-(
Tip 4. When juggling... Copy and paste to a blank page and play about with the sentence there - possibly making several versions that you can revue at the same time on page rather than in your head.
Oh yes... After the initiel copy and paste it is very useful to go back to the original document, highlight the text you are working on and SAVE the document. Then you can work on the awkward bit in the happy knowledge that you should be able to take the revision back to the exact spot without having to hunt for it - and that the spot should still be there... Guess how I know this...
Tip 5. There's lots of things that can be said about long sentences. Possibly the easiest one is that it is always best to make a sentence something that is reasonably easy to say aloud with only brief pauses for breath - at the commas. (It also helps me if I can recall what I started to talk about at the beginning of the sentence :-( )
The way to break a sentence up is to identify the elements in it. Perhaps someone here can provide a reference to a good guide to this? I had my grammar thumped into me rather a long time ago at school. A very basic staring point is one subject, on action and, possibly, one object. From there one can build up with things like the odd adjective and odd adverb. This is very boring but a little practice does really help.
My brother is disgustingly good at languages (it shouldn't be allowed). He say that he has been told by people with a first language other than English that the reason we struggle so much to learn other languages is that we don't comprehend the structure and workings of our own.
Tip 6. (I am not being rude here). If you feel that you would benefit enrol in a basic course in English grammar. If you were starting in IT you wouldn't hesistae to take a basic IT course... What's the difference for writing? Everything that can help should be used. If a course only confirms what we already know it tells us two things: (A) that we do know it and (b) that we can go on as we are or we can move up to the next level with confidence.
I hope this all helps.
David