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Proofreading, Revision, and a Cycle of Reflection
11.1 Proofreading
One important use of memory in ancient rhetoric was to appear well-versed, knowledgeable, and articulate on a topic by memorizing a speech rather than depending upon written or coded notes. In this way the speaker could avoid stammering, stuttering, or pausing at length at inappropriate times, which would ultimately make her appear more credible and persuasive on the topic. In the context of writing, avoiding mistakes like this and improving one’s credibility is much easier and can be accomplished through extensive proofreading. Where a speaker might use an incorrect word or mispronounce a word, the writer can look back over the text and correct that sort of thing, so in the end the final product appears well-polished and error free. This is connected in some way to what is called grammatical and lexical competence, but differs in that proofreading deals not necessarily with competence but performance. In other words, a speaker/writer may know how to spell “antidisestablishmentarianism” (competence), but due to a malfunctioning keyboard or untimely interruption might spell it “antidishesablementation,” which is a case of knowing the correct spelling but not rendering it correctly in a text (performance). Typos, misplaced words, missing words, and punctuation oversights are usually cases where the performance has suffered, and can easily be corrected by proofreading the paper multiple times and working through multiple drafts. For a detailed, step-by-step proofreading process, check out the proofreading section in Appendix G.
11.2 Revision
Closely related to proofreading is revision. The primary difference between the two is that while proofreading focuses on the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation, revision focuses on the higher level competencies. In terms of style, revision encompasses the domains of lexical and rhetorical effectiveness. When you can’t seem to find the right word on your first draft, revision allows you to go back and spend more time fine tuning that particular word choice. This, of course, is a luxury that an extemporaneous speaker does not have, as he must have the right word at his command. This required a large resident vocabulary, whereas our modern vocabulary has extensions like online dictionaries and thesauruses that can be brought to bear on our written work. And revision is not only word choice, but arrangement, logos, invented ethos – there is nothing that cannot be changed for a better effect in subsequent drafts!
11.3 Peer-Response
A cycle of peer response is important on multiple levels:
1) Peer Response helps us to grow together as writers. We all learn from one anothers’ successes and failures.
2) Acquiring feedback from other people who are involved in similar projects allows you to have your own line editor to minimize proofreading oversights, provides you with someone to test your ideas and provide possible insights you might not otherwise have available to you, and provides you with the simple assurance that you are not shooting in the dark, so to speak.
3) By looking at someone else’s take on an assignment, you may encounter other ways of approaching the assignment, which may give you additional ideas for your own work.
4) Editing someone else’s work helps you become a better editor of your own work, which is really the ultimate goal of the peer review sessions, since you won’t always have an entire class to run your ideas by.
11.4 Reflection
Reflection is the process, so integral to the improvement and evolution of your work, of looking back on each important act of writing or speaking and evaluating what was done well and what could be done better in the future. So often writers go from one project to another without pausing to consider what they have learned each time, and this inhibits their natural ability to learn from their failures and successes, Failure to reflect ultimately turns our failures into habits and our successes into accidents. Consistent reflection reverses this process by identifying what works and what doesn’t, and subsequently turning the successes into habits and relegating the mistakes to the trash can. This is complicated by the fact that sometimes mistakes turn out to be productive in changing circumstances, so that one never really arrives in this little game of improvement. We must be able to identify when something that we thought was a mistake turns out to be innovation, and when some habit that was once successful becomes no longer useful. Honestly, this process is no less integral to survival than it is to writing.
11.5 Rhetoric as a Life Practice
Much of rhetoric consists of this cycle: we write, we reflect on what we write, we write again, we reflect again – writers do this again and again. But rhetoric, although fun, is also practical. The inescapable fact is that we all exist in communities small and large, and that our primary ways of interacting with those communities is through listening, thinking, and speaking, reading, reflecting, and writing, all of which are rhetorical activities. My sincerest hope is that if you have learned anything about rhetoric in this handbook, about how to engage in these activities more effectively, that you will use those skills to effect positive change in your community. It is an empty rhetoric if you leave it here, but can be an active agent for the good of society if you integrate it into your life practice. Fundamentally, for the Greek and Roman rhetoricians in the cradle of Western civilization, this is what rhetoric was all about.
