My Reviewing Policy

         Reviewing is the absolute cornerstone of this community. It is great to post your work and read the work of others. The offspring of that effort is reviewing, sharing your knowledge, opinions, and talent to help you and other fellow writers grow in your collective craft.

         I am a burgeoning copyeditor. In my real life currently, I am working in the DC area for a scholarly society as a journal assistant (read: glorified secretary and minor formating editor). I've been in this position for over a year, and I'm currently also obtaining an editing certification from UC Berkeley online. I'm hoping to establish myself in the editing field until graduate school. I have always been and always will be a writer, but my muses have tapered in the last many months. My commitments to WDC have customarily been submission. It is time to shift to reviewing—a win-win situation. I will have further practice for my occupation, and I will finally be fulfilling that ever-important part of the three R’s.

         However, let's note that time will often be of the factor--if I only have a few minutes, it will be difficult to give a really in-depth, copyedited review of a piece. I don't want that to stop me from reviewing, though, so I am not above the "drive-by R&R," as I've seen other WDC-ers call them. A "drive-by R&R," is a quick number-rating and a few comments, sometimes as brief as, "Great!" If I read your piece, I will at the very least provide a "drive-by R&R"--if you'd like, you can always reply that you'd like a more in-depth review, and when I find the time, I'd be glad to provide one.

         This list of guidelines will outline how I will regard pieces for editing. I will always approach each piece from a copyediting point of view, which may result in the corrections of surface errors and small stylistic points. For example, if you have, “USA,” in your piece, I will correct it to, “U. S. A.,” in accordance with standards set in The Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS). Using the CMoS will be good practice for future, real-life editing.

         From that point, other editing factors will align with the object I am editing. For example, I cannot really address a poem in the same fashion that I will address an essay, editorial, or book. Different types of writing require different attentions.

         I am picky when it comes to poetry, as my old weekly contest that I've had to purge will attest. Although I may not be able to write it perfectly, I can spot a good poem pretty well. I can also offer constructive criticisms to help improve “okay” poems. Quick points: I value the quality of the words over rhyme or length, I value conciseness, and poems do not need to be saturated with adjectives or adverbs to be descriptive and emotive. I realize this is NEVER as simple as it sounds. When I approach your poem, I will have these and other ideas in my mind, though, and will help with whatever applicable knowledge I have.

         For other works—essays, books, editorials, stories—I will approach them like editing an essay, with which I am most familiar. Here, too, I value conciseness. Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, Section III, 13 reads, “Omit needless words.” I try to keep this in mind when I review (although in my own writing, I am usually endlessly wordy). Other than that, I will keep your main ideas and theses in mind, trying to evaluate your piece for effectiveness, whether you are trying to persuade, emote, or even simply tell a good story.

         My reviews themselves will usually consist of three sections. The first will be my overall impressions—generally, what I thought, and an initial evaluation of how well your piece flows. The second section will be copyediting—misspellings, grammatical mistakes, surface errors. The third piece will be my closing sentiments—any other tips, anything extra you can do.

         For my copyediting, I will usually copy an entire piece into MS Word and use the editing features therein. If there are many issues to address, and depending upon the length of the piece, I might copy and paste corrected passages or, if need be, the entire piece itself, into a review. Should I do this to your piece, I would urge you to read over and compare my copyediting with your original piece and decide if the changes are appropriate.

         There is a fourth aspect to reviewing: the rating. WDC has a five-star rating system, yielding ten levels of assessing the quality of your piece. Here is how I define each of these levels:


Perfection. I haven’t found anything to correct, and the main ideas and flow of your piece blew me away.

Spectacular. Your main ideas and flow still blow me away, but there are a few errors that need to be addressed.

Excellent. Quality piece, but there more errors than the four-and-a-half star rating, or not as much cohesion.

Awesome. Quality piece, but the errors left it feeling a little raw.

Great. Your main ideas are quality, but portraying them could be better, along with repairing surface errors.

Good. There are at least one or two points that are quality in this piece, but they are lost amid the presentation.

Okay. All ideas need to be addressed and tweaked to better the quality of the piece.

Developmental. All ideas need to be redeveloped, changed, or scrapped.

Poor. Rarely given, a piece like this shows total lack of effort.

Plagiarism. Obviously not original, and a legal violation.

         My editing policy will always be a work in progress, as different experiences will surely change how I edit pieces here on WDC.

         To refer to books I mentioned:

The Chicago Manual of Style, available by paid subscription
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/

Strunk & White, The Elements of Style, full text online
http://www.bartleby.com/141/