Local revision involves focusing on minor edits and proofreading. At the beginning of the year, I mainly relied on Grammarly to do my proofreading and grammar checking, but throughout the semester I started to focus on working at sentence level. I started looking at repetition in sentences and specific words, if the sentences appeared to be cut off abruptly, or if they were to run on. I realized that at the start of the semester, I used some words a lot more than others and I would get really repetitive; I started focusing on it and would proofread my papers. I would look up synonyms for repetitious words and replace them. An example of this would be in my project 2 essay, I could still see some repetition in my writing, things like: “While the internet seems to be altering our capacity for concentration and attention, could it also be altering our relationships and our empathy?” I use similar words in sentences together as I get stuck in my word choices. Once I had my peer review and went through the revision process I ended up with: “While the internet seems to be altering our capacity for concentration and attention, could it also be transforming our relationships and our empathy?” This sentence while it is very similar holds less repetition so it would be harder for the reader to become disengaged.
The global revision process involved focusing more on the content, organization, and clarity of my work. I didn’t think I struggled much with my organization in my first essays, but I do think some of my content was off. We wanted to focus on the “They say, I say” in our essays, and while there was a spattering of “I says” there wasn’t enough in my first essay to make it feel as personalized to me. Some sentences ran longer than intended, creating some clarity issues. An example of this is in my project 1 essay, my thesis was extremely long: “Technology isn’t completely what is to blame for the lack of conversation and empathy among youths today; we cannot completely pin the problem on technology for it is a tool to be used, an application used for achieving goals and new ideas, it isn’t the machine that controls you but vice versa.” In the peer review, I was told that the length of it could cause some clarity issues that led to some misunderstanding. I took that to heart for my project 2 essay and the thesis for that ended up being: “I agree that technology has created large shifts in our innate human behavior and gaps in our potential, I also believe that it isn’t just technology’s fault that human behavior is changing.” I made sure that for project 2 my thesis was clear and straight to the point for no chance of confusion.
