Writers usually need iterations of revisions and edits during their writings. To better understand the process of rewriting, we need to know what has changed be-tween the revisions. Prior work mainly focuses on detecting corrections within sentences, which is at the level of words or phrases. This paper proposes to detect revision changes at the…

The screen of the computer provides good practice for the writing process and functions as an exemplar for it since what is being written is not permanent in contrast to writing with pen on paper. The following research questions were addressed to explore the area and were investigated through the data: (1) Do students revise their writing…

For the process leading to the publication of one's professional work to be equitable, all authors must understand why and how publication decisions are made. Psychologists must understand how editors and reviewers look at manuscripts, and how the author's own attitudes and skills may affect the acceptance of manuscripts. These four papers are…

In the proliferation of articles about using computers in the composition classroom published in the last five or ten years, few mention anything about preparing students to compose on a computer while all assert that computers do indeed help the composing process. Preparing students to compose on a computer involves three major processes:…

Almost 600 questionnaires were sent to private and public colleges and universities in a nationwide survey of their revision practices in advanced composition courses. Among the results were the following: (1) the teacher figured most powerfully in any revision activity; (2) a single mode of revision was the prevailing practice; (3) private…

The diversity of textbook and scholarly book reviewers makes it difficult for an author to deal with reviews in any systematic or preplanned manner. There are, however, several helpful working assumptions: (1) the reviewer is always right, (2) the author is always right in principle but frequently wrong in practice, (3) the publisher wants what…

To learn when children would be able to evaluate and revise texts that presented significant comprehension problems, and to investigate the relationship between general reading skill and comprehension monitoring and revision skills, a study administered revision tests to 65 fourth grade and 38 sixth grade students from a rural New England school…

Teaching college writing students to edit the autobiographical writing of others has many advantages. Autobiographical materials, such as diaries, letters, or journals, are physically and psychologically accessible for students, and as editors they would be obliged to keep in mind appropriateness of language, tone, and simplicity or complexity of…

To elicit some written comments about student views of revision, an English professor surveyed about 100 students in several different composition classes regarding what they would do if given the opportunity to revise a class paper. More than 80% of the responses explicitly mentioned errors in spelling, mechanics, or grammar. Several students…

Writing problems common among many college students are "phrasal" errors such as limited vocabulary, inability to distinguish standard usage from slang or jargon, a tendency to frame thoughts in cliches, a peppering of meaningless intensifiers, and a gift for redundancy and wordiness. To help correct these problems, a text-checking system called…

One approach to the development of writing skills at the upper high school level involves modeling, objectivity, revision, and editing. Modeling requires the teacher to reproduce one major writing assignment so that students can observe directly how the teacher attacks the assignment, completing it within the same time frame as they themselves…

This study of editorial conferences in a university news laboratory examined the connections between dialogues about revision and the interpretations of dialogues by reporters and the editor in this journalism culture. The editorial conferences of two reporters with varying experience in publication and employment settings were analyzed, and the…

A computerized grammar checker was developed to assist teachers of English as a Second Language in editing student compositions. The first stage of development consisted of an error analysis of 125 writing samples collected from students. The 1,659 errors found were classified into 14 main types and 93 subtypes. This analysis served as the basis…

David Bartholomae's notion of "Writing on the Margins" is intriguing. He claims that good writers are those who "poise themselves on the margins in a tenuous and hesitant relationship to the language and methods of the university." This paradox is captivating because the margins serve as a place to which one is banished for not…

While the process of getting together a writing portfolio might help some students to understand how one is assembled, not all, or even most, graduates will have need to go through the process again in their lives. All the more reason, some would say, for them to do it now, but there are any number of reasons why this assumption should be…