Wow, so just looking at the title totally turned me off to reading this... as bad as that sounds. I had to read through a few of the pages multiple times until I could sort of grasp what I thought he was saying. Grammatical errors are not something you just apologize for and things get better... it isn't the type of thing where you mess it up, say I'm sorry and walk away. I took it as it is not as bad as that, you do not need to apologize for grammatical errors, and making them does not make you stupid. Some writers may place the error in on purpose, even though if someone saw it they may call them an idiot for the error... when really it could have been placed there on purpose.
I was a little confused when he began to speak of how we have to be skeptical of answers we get when we ask for help about a possible error we think we may have made. The way I take it, is that when we ask others to check our own paper odds are you will end up with even more errors then you started with. If this is true why do we do peer editing, and why in High School did I waste all those days in class having a minimum of three people checking over my paper and giving their own opinion on my work?
Overall this is not one of my favorite readings so far.
>>If this is true why do we do peer editing, and why in High School did I waste all those days in class having a minimum of three people checking over my paper and giving their own opinion on my work?<<
ReplyDeleteThe usefulness of that depends on what your peers were looking for. If you just grab a red pen and "correct" the mechanics - well, no, I'd agree (as would Williams) that such "editing" won't be much help...