Editing checklist style items
Find-replace gives quick aid to 3

Their editing checklist—the one you embed in your writing rubrics—should help students identify specific writing mechanics errors they habitually make. Then students can use their computers to help them correct those errors.

Later, after they have mastered the basics of writing, students can use the computer's word processor to help them achieve a clearer, more lively writing style. Two steps that virtually all students can take toward those goals can be listed on your writing assessment rubric and used by students as an editing checklist.

Help from text find-and-replace

Students who lack interest in writing anything other than what is required (99% of my students fit this description), can use their computers' find-and-replace function to find sentences where little changes can invigorate a paper.

On your students' editing checklist (another name for your writing assessment rubric), you can list two items:

• Uses vigorous verbs instead of flabby forms of to be or relying on adverbs to describe action.

• Uses the shortest, most common word instead of inflated language.

Both of these are easy to understand and to apply. Moreover, students can use their computers to help them target sentences whose style could be improved in these ways.

Please note: students can't use these strategies effectively in their own writing until after they are competent writers. Before that time they have far to many more serious matters to worry about.

1. Find and treat be words

Students can tone flabby writing by replacing forms of the verb to be with vigorous verbs.

Have students use find-and-replace to replace flimsy phrases like

• It is

• They are

• There is/ there are

with the same terms in a bold color. The color will help them zero in on sentences that could use some work.

Next have students replace half of those wimpy phrases with stronger verbs.

To invigorate their writing even more, students can use a second computer trick to achieve the vigorous verb use indicated on their editing checklist.

2. Eliminate -ly endings

Good writers downplay adverbs and concentrate on verbs. Writers who habitually use one or more of the following adverbs for emphasis should use their computer's find function and wildcards to change words ending in -ly, such as

actually	hopefully
absolutely	incredibly
completely	ironically
continually	literally
constantly	really
continuously	totally
finally	unfortunately

with the automatic text color changed to some bright color like red or blue.

Those words are not wrong or bad. However, if they are overused, such adverbs make students appear either lazy or ignorant of good English word usage.

By putting their adverbs in different color, students can see at a glance if they are overdoing adverbs. Once students have flagged the adverbs, have them rewrite half the sentences containing -ly words to eliminate the need for -ly words by using more vivid verbs.

3. Close the -ize

The second style item on the editing checklist is elimination of inflated language.

Good writers use the shortest, most common word that expresses their meaning. By contrast, poor writers use inflated language thinking "big words" make them appear more intelligent and sophisticated. They

• Utilize

• Procedurize

• Prioritize

• Monetize

when they should

• Use

• Set procedures

• Set priorities

• Make money.

Before your students get into the habit of -izing their words, teach them to use their word processors to target -ize terms.

Again, students need to use find with wildcards to identify the -ize terms and replace them with the same terms in colorful type. By changing the automatic text color to a bold color, students can see at a glance if they are pumping hot air into their text with -ize words.

Have students replace half of those -ize terms with more common terms that fit the context.

Why only half?

You want to know why I said students should eliminate half the problems they identify, don't you?

• The constructions I discussed may be silly, pompous, or lazy but they are not incorrect. Nobody will die if they are not changed; changing all of them will not raise a student's grade significantly.

• Repairing even half the problem areas teaches students how to edit on projects that are important to them.

• Changing even half the flimsy phrases strengthens the writing.

• Being told to do only half the potential task leaves the students in control: they decide which sentences to change in their writing.

Writers don't need to write on a computer to firm and tighten their prose. Paper and pencil work, too. However, using a computer removes some of the tedium and most of the time required for finding and replacing weak English word usage.

See how find-and-replace can identify grammar errors as well as poor English word choices.