An example of good editing:
Now, I am not tooting our own horn here, because this blurb was ever so slightly edited by the good people here at Clemson U.
All they did was tweak maybe three or four words, but it was done quite well.
An example of bad editing:
San Jose marches to its own beat
(excerpts from Wesleyan University's newspaper)
By (a Wesleyan student, I assume)
As the lights came up on the Crowell Concert Hall stage last Friday, the silence was broken with one mighty, ringing beat from a Taiko drum. Throughout the evening that drum and a dozen others like it produced a myriad of sounds—beats with a pattering quality like rain or with a hoove-like insistence that clacked, pounded, and boomed. The members of the San Jose Taiko Company took their audience on a percussive tour de force, performing traditional Japanese Taiko drumming with a modern twist...
These rhythms were used throughout the concert to perform pieces inspired by various ideas and cultural components, including globalization, cultural unity, and the Asian-American experience. In their expression of these ideas, the performers made use of high-intensity drumming, high-energy martial-arts-inspired choreography, and a hypnotic communal vigor that kept the audience mesmerized and yearning for more...
Some pieces built their drumming into a textured tapestry of sound, while others emphasized a lone drum or flute. Regardless of instrumentation, the performance was an unrelentingly full-body, full-energy affair—at one point a drummer's vehemence caused his headband to fly off mid-song. As one watched the performers leap, jump, and kick in carefully-choreographed sequences, it was not difficult to understand why the performance's program noted that company members are expected to keep in top physical shape as part of the rehearsal regimen: the fervor needed to transport an audience the way San Jose Taiko did left all the performers grinning and soaked with sweat by the end of the night...
Hm. Not a lot of editing going on at Wesleyan, I see. I don't expect student writing to be all that great, and I appreciate the enthusiasm of this reporter, but where's the grammar police when you need them? In this blogger's humble opinion, most of the burden is on the school paper's editor to fix the awkward language, bad punctuation, and the general Mickey Mouse-ness of the story.
This is not to say that this blogger isn't guilty of similar mistakes, lest she become the snarkee (instead of the snarker), but if one is paying serious beans for a college edumacation, one would hope to have a more involved editor.
I ain't sayin... I'm just sayin'.
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