Assignment #3: Editing Project + Rhetorical analysis

Length: 4-6 page rhetorical analysis describing your editing choice on a project of your choice

Due Date: November 26, 2003

This assignment has two parts: the revision of a professional document, article, or web site of your choice and an analysis of your revision. Because you will have just finished reading about language bias and gender, you will choose a document that you feel needs revision to be more accurate and representative of contemporary editing practices in terms of gender. However, you will also have just finished a unit on issues of political correctness, and so will be aware of the sometimes thin line between inclusive language and censorship, or inclusive language and obfuscation of existing sexism.

Purpose This paper will serve several purposes, it:

• allows you the opportunity to put into practice the things you just learned about professional writing in a corporate or academic environment.
• requires you to analyze and provide critical insight into why and when one would revisit professional documents with a critical eye toward issues of gender.
• gives you an opportunity to think carefully about the gulf between policing language or describing a utopian future, and specifically, the ways in which professional writing and editing are politically loaded situations–as we have learned, choosing the status quo is also a political choice.
• allows you to employ professional editing techniques, and develop a skill that has application in the workplace and your future classes.
• gives you the opportunity to extend the notion of professional writing from text-only editing to making appropriate visual choices.

1. Choose a document. It doesn’t have to be "bad" or sexist–in fact, the best editing project will require you to think about subtle choices. I find academic articles, corporate documents and web sites, and magazine and newspaper stories to be especially rich in providing examples of subtle gender bias of the sort referred to in our text. Magazines intended for women and those whose audience is less well educated (TV Guide, Readers Digest) often contain more overt examples.
2. Once you have chosen the document you wish to edit, decide how you want to do that. On the page with a red pen is fine, but do remember you are editing visual choices as well as verbal choices. You could also cut and paste, etc.
3. Think about the editing guidelines described in our text, as well as those you developed with your group, as you make editing choices. Note the changes you make, as well as those you do not. Note the things that seem very subtle to you, but that may need revisiting and more thought.
4. Once you are comfortable with the editing you have done (be sure to use professional editing marks as you do this editing), begin to organize your thoughts for the analysis of your editing choices.
5. You’ll want to discuss:

• your overall philosophy for the project (what prompted you to choose this document, how you would describe your concerns about gender in professional editing, whether you consider your editing minimal or extremely active, why, etc.)
• the specific choices you made and why you made those choices
• any changes you did not make, and why you did not make those choices

6. As with all analysis, if you only explain what you did, you have only done half the work. You need to explain why you made those choices and how they fit into your overall philosophy of editing. Be sure to cite the book, any readings from the semester, and the document you are editing.

7. You will turn in your 4-6 page analysis with your edited document.

8. Be sure to start work early on this–it is a complex task that requires you to read, apply the readings, learn a new and perhaps foreign skill–editing–and write a paper.

9.Fill in the grading rubric and turn it in with the paper and editing project.

Rubric for this assignment

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