User:Tony1/Advanced editing exercises: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:06, 18 March 2012

Revision as of 08:38, 12 April 2012

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{{editing exercise

|1=Problem text

|2=For their home, the Hoggs chose the largest lot, 14.5 acres (5.9 ha). Ima worked closely with architect John Staub to design the house so that it would show off the art the family had already purchased.

[Remove four words and change a fifth, to produce neater wording.]

}}

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{{editing exercise

|1=''Where'' the issues are

|2=For their home, the Hoggs chose the largest lot, 14.5 acres (5.9 ha). Ima worked closely with architect John Staub to design <font color=red>'''the house so that it would'''</font> show off the art the family <font color=red>'''had already purchased'''</font>.

}}

{{editing exercise

|1=Solution

|2=For their home, the Hoggs chose the largest lot, 14.5 acres (5.9 ha). Ima worked closely with architect John Staub to design <font color=maroonred>'''<s>the</s> a'''</font> house <font color=maroonred>'''<s>so</s>'''</font> that <font color=red>'''<s>it</s>'''</font> would show off the art the family had <font color=darkgreenred>'''<s>already</s>''' </font>purchased.

}}

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|2=*The grammar is simpler and more succinct.

*<font color=maroon>'''"A"'''</font> rather than "the" is appropriate, since the house—especially in the changed grammatical environment—is one of a class of houses that could be designed for that purpose, not the only one.

*<font color=darkgreenred>'''"Already"'''</font> is redundant in the light of the past tense (unless it's required for some particular emphasis, which was not the case in this context).

*<font color=red>'''"That"'''</font> has a quite different grammatical role now; in effect it's been removed and reinserted under a different guise. Only by coincidence does the word still appear in the solution.

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|2=Concern over the spouting water potentially knocking people down made the design both a legal and a physical challenge.

[There are ''six''at least three issues! Stare at it and count before you access the hints below.]

}}

{{editing exercise

|1=''What'' the issues are

|2=*Is "concern over a potential" the most direct way to express what underlies a design challenge? Is "potentially" necessary, anyway?

*There's an ungainly grammatical construction in the middle ("water knocking people down" is a bit clumsy).

*"Potentially" is a hedgehog word, we think.

*There's an ungainly grammatical construction in the middle.

*There's an "-ing ... -ing" repetition; it's OK, but removing it would be nicer.

*There might be a way of avoiding the "concern made the design" wording.

*Is it necessary to use "both" to mark the combination of the legal and the physical? Maybe, maybe not.

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{{editing exercise

|1=Solution

|2=<font color=darkgreen>'''The risk'''</font> <font color=maroonred>'''that the spouting water would knock people down'''</font> <font color=chocolatedarkgreen>'''was'''</font> both a legal and physical <font color=chocolatedarkgreen>'''design'''</font> challenge.

}}

{{editing exercise

|1=Explanations

|2=This is a long-winded. Ifexplanation, so if you understand the solution just by looking at the solutionit, please move on.

*<font color=darkgreen>'''The risk'''</font> is more direct than <font color=darkgreen>'''concern over'''</font>, and allows us to dispense with the inelegant "potentially".

*The <font color=maroon>'''"noun plus+ -ing'''</font>" problem was easy to overcome, by using "that"; the samethis solutionalso eliminates the "-ing ... -ing" repetition. See Exercise 14 below for more on this.

*Using the verb ''be'' (here, <font color=chocolatedarkgreen>'''was'''</font>) is a plainer, more direct wording: "X was a challenge" rather than "X made Y a challenge". "Y" ("the design") is now tidily snuck in as a mere adjective to "challenge".

*We chose to retain the grammatical marking of the legal and physical combination: ''both'' legal and physical; we know it's a "combination", but "both" reinforces that in this context either (i) any combination, or (ii) combining the legal and the physical, are unusual.

*Using the verb ''be'' (here, <font color=chocolate>'''was'''</font>) is a plainer, more direct wording: "X was a challenge" rather than "X made Y a challenge". "Y" ("the design") is now tidily snuck in as a mere adjective to "challenge".

}}

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{{editing exercise

|1=Comments

|2=*The [[ellipsis]] avoids repetition ("and <font color=chocolate><s>'''it'''</font></s> would be less vulnerable") and retains "artificial turf" as the subject throughout.

*"Natural grass" doesn't even ''need'' to be repeated, since there's now a comparative "less". "Less", then, is a back-reference, and holds the two clauses together.

*The verbose gobbledygook has been replaced with more cohesive wording: 33 words are now 24. "Also" has morphed into "and", which performs a useful task in linking the two clauses.

}}

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|2=Chrissie Watkins, a 23-year-old woman, leaves an evening beach party on New England's Amity Island to go skinny dipping in the Atlantic Ocean, only to be <font color=darkgreen>'''violently'''</font> dragged back and forth <font color=red>'''<s>violently</s>'''</font> on the surface and <font color=red>'''then</font> <font color=darkgreen>'''pulled'''</font> under the water.

}}

==Group 4==