TWS — Lecture 2: Collaborative Writing and Editing
Purpose
This lecture helps students to function in a team of writers and editors by encouraging them
to identify differences between the individual and group writing and editing processes and
devise strategies for working with these differences.
Justification
By asking teams to construct functional collaborative writing situations and to apply editing
techniques, the application of two rather large and abstract topics—group writing and
editing—is stressed. Team members, then, come away with an understanding of the variety
of orderly ways to approach writing and editing and of the importance of a rigorous
systematic approach.
Giving this lecture after the students have had some team writing experience is preferable
because it allows the students to reflect on the methods that they have employed to date and
identify differences between their method and a more systematic and comprehensive method.
Without this basis of comparison, the concepts covered in the lecture may seem abstract or
not immediately applicable and are less likely to be assimilated.
Methods
A chalk/marker board functions during the group exercises in this lesson as a passive
reminder of lecture concepts.
Walk Through:
Ask the teams how they went about writing their first lab report and how it worked out. They
usually volunteer quite a bit of information about their process working or not working, and it
seems get the class thinking about process and recognizing that there are different ways of
approaching things—some of which work better than others.
Discussion: Types of collaborative writing
Discussing the differences in collaborative writing styles is not as difficult by this point in
the series since the students have already had some experience writing in their teams.
Using the students’ comments on how they approached their first team writing
experience, I fill in as much as I can on a chart on the board which has three columns:
type of writing, who writes, who edits. Eventually some of the chart is filled. Fill in the
blanks and discuss the system with the class.1
 Cooperative Writing


- an author writes, gives drafts to others for editorial input, and revises
- this is a lot like the peer editing students have experienced in their
freshman composition classes
Sequential Writing
- several authors write independent sections which are collected and
coordinated by one final author
- this is how it seems many teams function innately
Functional Writing
- authors are assigned tasks based on specialization
Christine Manion. A Writer’s Guide to Oral Presentations & Writing in the Disciplines. Prentice Hall
2001: 132.
1
Dave Kmiec
TWS Lecture 2
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

- this is broader than sequential writing in that some authors may not be
writing at all but instead editing or researching
Integrated Writing
- authors write independent sections and editing and coordination is done in
a group
Co-writing
- authors write, edit, and revise in a group
- this is how some students have worked when partnered in lab settings
before
Exercise: Considering situations for writing
After discussing the stratification, tell the teams to come up with situations where each
type of writing would be the most appropriate. Being vague here produces some pleasant
surprises as some teams think of a broad range of industrial and commercial situations
where others think of academic ones that usually apply to their team specifically. That
range is useful when you ask them to present their situations to the class.
Evaluating the value of the situations that the teams produce is important. The class
typically comes to the conclusion that the type of writing employed is dependent on the
technical knowledge and skill required to perform each task. This can be used to begin
talking about levels of editing.
Discussion: Levels of peer (and self) editing
Students who aren’t constantly exposed to the writing and editing processes are often
intimidated by the less technical side of the reporting process. Peer editing is much less
intimidating if it is done in a systematic fashion: by stratifying the often haphazard error
identification and correction process into four levels.
 Content—this level assesses the technical accuracy of content and is typically
conducted by someone within the field
 Organization—this level studies the ordering of main points and assesses its
contribution to or detraction from the reader’s ability to follow the text to its logical
conclusion
 Style—this level determines whether the tone, style, persona, etc. are effective and
appropriate for the text’s intended audience
 Mechanics—this level compares the mechanical and grammatical structure of the text
with appropriate standard form
Discussion: Organization
Talk about the idea of beginning, middle, and end—or introduction, body, conclusions; or
any of a hundred other ways to phrase it—and the logical progression of information.
Spend time talking about how order can improve the readability of a document. You may
want to suggest that, if they’re having trouble making connections or understanding what
they’re reading in a peer editing situation, they should identify what the content and
function of each sentence is and make sure that those content pieces are in the correct
order. To do this, reduce sentences to meta-labels, put the information labels in order,
and then re-associate. (I find engineers see this as “easier than putting thirty-word
sentences in order”; I find information and computer scientists love this method.)
Dave Kmiec
TWS Lecture 2
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Exercise: Editing for order
In groups, have them work on a technical paragraph which has some organizational
issues. (A sample can be found in the appendix.) Then go over it as a class.
Discussion: 10 ways to interpret "awk." or 10 things to say instead of "awk."
Another skill that is essential to teams that peer edit is the ability to give specific and
useful feedback.2 Discuss why getting a paper back from a professor or a peer reviewer
that simply says “there’s something wrong here” or “this is awkward” is not helpful.
Then discuss some ways to quantify awkwardness:
 Place the main idea first
 Use standard sentence order
 Use the active voice if possible (3 methods)
o Move the person acting out of a prepositional phrase
o Supply a subject
o Substitute passive verbs with active ones
 Employ parallelism
 Write sentences 12 to 25 words in length
 Use there are sparingly but use it for emphasis or to avoid the verb exist
 Avoid nominalizations
 Avoid strings of choppy sentences
 Avoid wordiness
 Avoid redundant words or phrases
This list, though by no means comprehensive, identifies typical errors that may result in
awkward phrasing and is equally useful when editing as when looking at vague editing
comments.
Exercise: Giving constructive editing comments
In groups, have them work on a series of sentences which could benefit from the
application of items on this list. (If you are short on time, you may want to tell them to
list which of the above rules they would employ rather than actually ask them fix the
sentences.)
2
Vague, and consequentially unhelpful, editing suggestions is one of the biggest problems in the peer
review process—especially in classes of non-writing majors. While I’m sure the concept of bringing this to
the students’ attention in order to stimulate them to provide more specific responses is not new, the
resource that first brought my attention to this activity is: G.A. Neubert & S.J. McNelis. “Peer Response:
Teaching Specific Revision Suggestions.” English Journal 79 (1990): 52-56.
Dave Kmiec
TWS Lecture 2
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