Revise, Revise, Revise

I've never been a fan of revision. Once I finish writing a piece, I want to be done with it. Thinking of redoing a paper that has already been written once sounds horrifying. Don't get me wrong. I do read my writing after it's finished to correct minor errors, but I've never actually redone huge sections. That is, until I took magazine article writing.

Last semester, I wrote an article that would be submitted to Seventeen magazine. I finished a week early so I decided I would proofread it a few days later. When I reread it, I realized it wasn't very good. I had new ideas and wanted to change the overall message of the paper. I really didn't want to take the time to redo the paper, but I also wanted a good grade. I ended up rewriting most of the paper. The second version was so much better than the first. It was more humorous, relayed my message more efficiently, and contained a better word choice.

Although it took time to revise the paper, I'm glad I did it because the final product turned out extremely well. That experience taught me good writing relies on taking the necessary amount of time to write and revise until you have the paper written to the best of your ability. It takes a lot of effort, but in the end, it's worth it.

The editing mistake I found this week was on Facebook. My friend updated his status and said, "Being in bed sick all day has got me thinking. If I'm ever trapped on a deserted Island, the only things I need are a women, equipment for Netflix, and fishing supplies. I'll take it from there." When people aren't careful about their writing on Facebook, it always stands out to me. Even though I know it's just Facebook, it still irritates me. In the status update, 'island' does not need to be capitalized in the middle of a sentence. Also, does he mean a woman or multiple women when he says "the only things I need are a women"? The two meanings convey very different things. It's important to be careful with punctuation and grammar so you get the correct message across to your audience.