Blog #4 Editing

       Editing someone else's paper was a bit difficult. I say this because I did not want to write anything that was going to hurt the person's feelings. I learned that when you critisize somebody it can bring their self esteem down so it is nice to compliment them too. It was also difficult because I did not want to write so much negativity to the point where they end up thinking that their paper is not good. I think a good way to help someone develop their paper is saying something like " I think this is a good paper but, to make it a great paper you can...." Trying not to hurt someone's feelings is probably the hardest thing to do when ur correcting things is difficult but, aside from that I like editing papers. I like editing papers because it gives me a chance to express my feelings on the paper. I can talk about what I liked and what I did not like or what were the strongest point of the paper. My favorite part about editing papers probably has to be the spelling mistakes. I think I am good at catching most of them. It also lets me help someone out which is good because sometimes it is hard to be a critic to your own work. When two people look at the same thing, they usually have different views on it. This is a good thing because different opinions open up different ideas.
     Editing someone else's work also helped me look at my own work differently and can help me point out what I may need to change. You are your toughest critic so if you can jude another person's work then you should be able to really push yourself to your limit to know what needs correction on your own work. The comments that I used for editing another person's paper is helpful now for me because I can look to see if my paper has a strong thesis, a good introduction that catches the readers attention, good organization, selection of evidence, weak or strong quoteing styles, developing body paragraphs and a good conclusion. I can also look at my paper with fresh eyes since I know what needs to be done. I can make certain points stronger and I can cut unecessary information that is just going to bore the reader. I say this because If you have run on sentences or information that has no value, the reader will get bored (I have witnessed some of these things today editiong papers.) In a funny way, editing someone else's paper is like a lesson learned because you viewed it for youself, you saw what was wrong and now you know better so you wont make that same mistake.