This week our meeting was again canceled due to unforeseen circumstances. I was really worried that our week would then be unproductive. However, Trish, the other intern with the Florida Conference of Historians, suggested the two of us meet on our to review our edits. This meeting was useful for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, it was nice to get to know Trish better. Before, we mainly had just been just been meeting in a group. Talking on our own was fun!
Next, we both taught each other our different strengths when it comes to writing. I am much better at detecting grammar and general writing mistakes—for example, passive voice issues. She, on the other hand, was really good at detecting citation issues. She guided me to a helpful site that clearly laid out the guidelines for Chicago citation format, which I know will be beneficial in this internship and in my other history classes.
Other than this meeting, I worked on editing a new paper. I really enjoyed this paper because it was on a topic I know a lot about. As much as I enjoyed our other article for being something I have not heard a lot about, it was fun to read about a topic I really love.
In this paper, I noticed a lot more issues than the previous one. Mainly, there were issues with passive voice. Writing excessively in passive voice is an issue I already know quite a lot about. It is a common issue in history writing because, in an attempt to around formal, things are said in a round-about way. However, this usually results in a paper with convoluted and unclear themes. To avoid passive voice, you need to make the subject in the sentence actively complete the verb. Trish found a very useful web addition to help with this as well! Usually, I just Cntrl-F for the passive verbs. However, I can see this being useful to recommendation for our writers with this issue.
The citations were also a bit of a mess. With Trish's new cite, I could go back and add most of the new recommendations easily.
Dr. Farless has already rescheduled our meeting for next week l, and I am excited to see what she thinks of our development!
To prepare for next week, I also plan on editing another paper in our file. While we have not decided which piece to go over, I want to practice the new citation editing skills I learned frim Trish.
Overall, this was a pretty un eventful week, but an educational one. This weekend I have plans to begin using these new skills for my advantage. I am excited to see how my editing improves with these new skills.
I am also excited to meet with Dr. Farless next week to learn what she thinks of our edits since we did not get to learn this week. Next week, I hope to finish the second paper we stated and get started on a third as well.