Editing...

Make edits to your third draft

Once the author has written a third draft they are ready to edit their work with attention to technical and mechanical issues. The editing process is that point in time where teacher and author sit together and review writing for proper structural, grammatical, syntactic, semantic and technical acuity. This is an excellent time to offer a mini-lesson on a particular point which you want an author to learn or reinforce, such as capitalization, noun-verb agreement, use of quotation marks, etc.

To accomplish editing, you may choose to print out a hard copy of the author's third draft to review together, or you may opt to save paper and view the piece in the word processor. If you use Word as your word processor, you can go to Tools > Track Changes on the menubar to turn on the editing feature. This will allow you and your author to make changes right on the computer screen as word makes note of each recommended edit.

At the end of the editing process, the author will have completed a fourth draft of his or her work.

Further Reading:

NCTE: Grammar in the Writing Classroom
http://www.ncte.org/elem/content/118653.htm

Grammar and Conventions
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/grammar.html

Blue Book of grammar and Punctuation
http://www.grammarbook.com/

Common Errors in English
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

Guide to Grammar and Writing
http://cctc.commnet.edu/grammar/

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