Editing Your Own Work – Part 2

Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, CGG
Jun 18, 2024
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SyllabusSyllabus
SyllabusSyllabus

About this webinar

Genealogists write. Their written narratives include stories of ancestral families, biographies of individual ancestors, and explanations supporting genealogical proofs. For their writing to succeed, genealogists—like all effective writers—repeatedly self-edit everything they write. The process results in polished products that the genealogist’s readers will understand, enjoy, and cherish. \n \nEmphasizing genealogical narrative, these two webinars will address the self-editing process. Part 1 will focus on “big-picture” editing, including stages of self-editing; focus; keeping the writer out of the narrative; editing the writing’s overall structure, organization, and flow; and improving major and minor subdivisions of written genealogical narratives, including paragraphing. Part 2 will focus on “nitty-gritty” editing, including capitalization, punctuation, sentence structure, spelling, word choice, and reducing word count.

About the speaker

Tom Jones is an award-winning genealogical researcher, writer, editor, and educator. He co-edited the National Genealogical Society Quarterly in 2003 through 2018, and he is the author of the textbook...
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Comments (105)

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  1. DG
    Don Graham
    1 year ago

    precise and to the point. Exactly what we needed.

  2. WV
    Webinar Viewer
    1 year ago

    Very well organized and speaker was very knowledgeable.

  3. AJ
    Ann Jay
    1 year ago

    As a former English teacher it is good to brush up on writing rules. Thanks. Superb.

  4. WV
    Webinar Viewer
    1 year ago

    Tom gave lots of great advice! The handout is very helpful too.

  5. WV
    Webinar Viewer
    1 year ago

    Nice refresher for those of us who have been out of school for many years. I still think that having 2 spaces between sentences is better because it visually helps a reader see that a sentence is ending and another one is starting. Otherwise, two sentences separated only by a single space can appear to be one and could cause the reader to need to re-read what was written--especially true for fast readers. (I hope the "usage pendulum" will swing back and acknowledge this issue.)

  6. RT
    RJ Trusler
    1 year ago

    Very clear speaking

  7. WV
    Webinar Viewer
    1 year ago

    Excellent refresher, and even a few points that were new to me.

  8. DR
    DIANA ROSEN
    1 year ago

    Important material and easy to understand

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