Editing: Exercise
(Material Prepared by Silvia Rivero)
Now it’s time for us to edit a text. Please, read the following unedited text:
Loman’s Fashions is a retailer of women’s and men’s outerwear. The circular was
distributed by them in November. This circular advertised a manufacturer’s closeout
of designer leather coats for women for $ 59.99. These coats are regularly sold by
Loman’s for $ 300.00. The ad announced that the store would open at 7 a.m. on
Friday, November 30. It also stated that the “early bird catches the savings!“ ,
Loman’s had sold all the coats that they had announced in the ad after about fifteen
minutes. A shopper inquired about the coats at 7:30 a.m. Somebody told her that
there were no coats left. She complained that it was Loman’s obligation to sell her a
designer leather coat of similar value at the prize they had announced in an add. The
store manager declined to do so, as a consequence of this, the shopper filed a
complaint in Small Claims Court. In this complaint she alleged that a contact had
been reached by Loman’s. Because they had failed to sell the leather coats they had
advertised at the price they had advertised.
Please, click on YES or NO in response to the questions in the following editing checklist
and then click on “Edited Version” to view a version of the text edited for that specific
category in the checklist.
Note: In each case we have focused on the errors belonging to a specific category
exclusively. You will see that there are other errors in the text that have not been edited.
Our purpose is to help you develop the habit of making focused passes through the text
and to leave any other errors for the next focused editing pass.
CHECKLIST
a. Are there any phrases and/or sentence fragments in this text?
Yes / No
b. Are there any run-ons or comma splices?
Yes / No
c. Is there an unnecessary use of the passive voice?
Yes / No
d. Should you reduce the use of the verb “to be” or its conjugated forms?
Yes / No
e. Is there an overuse of nominalization?
Yes / No
f. Are there any overly embedded sentences? Are there some sentences that include
dependent clauses when that would not be necessary?
Yes / No
g. Is the same sentence structure repeated over and over again?
Yes / No
h. Are there any tautological definitions in the text?
Yes / No
i. Are there any spelling errors?
Yes / No
j. Look at the nouns in the text. Is there any problem with the use of the appropriate
singular or plural endings? Is there any problem with the use of articles in the text?
Yes / No
k. Look at the verbs. Has the right verb tense been used in all cases?
Yes / No
l. - Look at punctuation. Do you see any problems with commas, periods, semicolons,
quotation marks, etc.?
Yes / No
m. Is it possible to combine two sentences containing related ideas, for instance by using
“who”, “which”, “that”?
Yes / No
n. - Are there words that occur repeatedly but unnecessarily in the text?
Yes / No
o. Are the sentences in the text appropriately linked by using connectors?
Yes / No