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.
Emphasizing 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.
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One of the best webinar series on writing I’ve attended. Watch Part 1 before watching this one.
Excellent!
I have been a writer for many years, but not on genealogical topics. The points made were a good review and a reminder of how to improve my writing. Thank you.
Thanks for the excellent instructions. Thanks also for reminding me of Sister Mary Michael’s task to her high school senior English class to diagram Pope Pius XII’s encyclicals, in which one sentence often occupied more than half a pamphlet page. I may have been the only one of her students who found that fun. Probably not meeting your writing standards here, but I did my best!
The information was basic, practical and useful!
The presentation answered so many questions. I like what he said about the two spaces after a period being from the Victorian era, and no longer correct. Thank you for the excellent talk. I appreciate having the handout to refer to as well.
Grammar review! Excellent.
Always worth tuning in