COMM 209: Monday's profile assignment (w/ important tangent on editing)

Due at the beginning of class ...

750 to 1,000 words

In class Friday, you were asked to interview a classmate about a time he or she learned something valuable from making a mistake. I asked to incorporate that incident into a profile of the person.

My focus in giving you the assignment was primarily on the psychology of interviewing someone about something that could be potentially embarrassing and reporting it, i.e. writing it up, in a way that doesn't unnecessarily embarrass the fellow student who trusted you with this information. But in grading your story, I will also be looking for how readable it is, how well written it is and how interesting it is. In other words, I will be evaluating it as a piece of journalistic writing.

Before you turn it in, be sure to check back over your story for things like:

-- sentence length

-- spelling (always!)

-- use of interesting, active words

-- good attribution of quotes

If you see things you want to change, use standard proofreader's symbols to make the changes.

Take the time to do some edits. (I know, I know: You'd think people who write for a living wouldn't use "edit" as a noun. But we do. Get used to it.) I won't count off for messy papers if you do. In fact, I'd rather see hard-copy edits in your papers. It shows me you're taking them seriously, and it shows you realize a little bit of mess is often required to get things right. You will find most of the editing symbols you need on line, and I'll show you a couple of others. Nancy Edmonds Hanson of Minnesota State University at Moorhead has a short list of the more common copyediting symbols on the Web ... and the The University of Colorado has a good summary of both editing (on the left) and proofreading (on the right) marks in two columns. They're no longer used much in the daily production of newspaper copy, but you still will need to know them for marking up hard copy in more complex editing situations. And if you should know I want my students to make handwritten edits. I've even been known to give extra credit for them,