Grammar Guide Captions
When I first approached
the grammar guide I was skeptical of my abilities to create an effective
page. I was very intimidated by some of the other students in the
class who seemed to catch on so easily. The simplicity with which
others ventured into the project however, made me feel a little more confident
about my accomplishments thus far in the project. I was fortunate
enough to gain time with Dr. Canada earlier in the semester in order to
work out some pesky little problems with my grammar guide. His suggestions
were extremely helpful. By completing this project (no matter how
much I complained) I have proven to myself that I am not technologically
illiterate. To be quite honest, I am thoroughly pleased with the
outcome of my labor; I am especially proud of my grammar guide reflections.
Sweat and tears (enough to fill a tub) went into the completion of my guide
and what I have to show for it is a published piece of my own creation.
Editing Project Captions
The editing project was
perhaps the hardest thing that I was forced to endure during this grammar
course. What made this project such a challenge was the fact that
I am a complete numb skull when it comes to finding grammatical mistakes
within a text. Being totally aware of the learning experience that
is incorporated in doing such a project, I braced myself for a very un-enjoyable
experience. I would love to tell you that I was pleasantly surprised
and ecstatic to do the editing project, but then I would be lying.
Instead, I spent the good part of a week sulking over my selection and
nit picking it for anything and everything that I could identify clearly
as a grammatical mistake. Ultimately, what made the project so time
consuming and frustrating was the difficulty I faced in not changing stylistic
elements found in the author’s original work. Once I got passed
the difficulty of not changing the author's original stylistic elements
I encountered a number of small grammatical mistakes. For example,
I was amazed at how many punctuation errors I found in the text: misplaced
commas, misused semi-colons, capitalization problems, misused ellipses,
and within the final pieces of the text there were a number of places where
sentences appeared without subjects. Most importantly, by completing this
project I have discovered that my previous assumptions about my success
in an editing career are correct: I’d be too busy rewriting the text the
way I like it, to pay any attention to grammatical mistakes.