On 5/24/08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/5/24 SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com:
Yes, it's a big improvement, but in fairness, it's not a major copy edit. It really is quite difficult to turn an article from something disjointed and poorly written into a flowing narrative. It's especially frustrating when the works gets reverted, or more often chipped away bit by bit over the following weeks and months. When we see a well-written piece of prose, we should hesitate to wade in unless we're sure we can improve it, but very few people have that attitude, maybe because they think good writing is easy, or because they think it doesn't really matter.
Actually, I disagree: content accuracy is more important than writing flow, and reverting or even discouraging the addition of new information for the sake of writing flow is very bad practice.
I didn't mean that good prose should never be changed, but it would be nice to see it improved. Instead, what happens when you get an article to the point where the topic is well-covered and the writing flows well is that almost all edits to it after that are a deterioration. It's rare that an article continues to get better after being featured, for example, but not unusual for it to deteriorate unless it's watched closely. When I wrote that people should hesitate to edit good prose, I meant precisely that -- not that they shouldn't, but that they should ask themselves whether what they want to add or remove really does constitute improvement.
Sarah