2008/5/24 SlimVirgin:
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.
This seems like the
opposite of Slim's complaint. She's not suggesting
that new information be reverted or discouraged for the sake of writing
flow. It's about those people who make later changes without paying
attention to text flow. A careful writer can pay attention to text flow
when adding new facts.
Ec