Michelle Baleka

This as an excerpt from a work-in-progress novel project a friend of mine is writing. With the hope of revitalizing her original idea, and with tightening it up as much as possible, she has asked for my honest feedback and editing suggestions. 

When editing others' documents on a computer, I tend to highlight errors or sections I find somewhat unclear either by underlining, adding a strikethrough, and/or turning the text red. I will then insert my comments and suggestions in red font, with any additional comments in parentheses next to the original/highlighted line in order to separate my notes from the surrounding text. I find this format allows for more direct editing, including the mending of structural/surface errors, and longer explanations for revision suggestions than Word's mark-up feature allows, which I have used often in the past. Directly inserting suggestions or highlighting problem areas with red font is more immediately eye-catching than mark-up notations, and mirrors the pen and paper editing process (which I prefer).

A peer of mine asked me to take a look at her review-style essay before she submitted it for grading.

As stated above, all my editing suggestions, corrections, and comments are in red font, making them distinguishable from the rest of the text. 

This PDF includes the editing I did for a friend's essay. As a non-native English speaker, Y.W. has asked for my assistance a few times with editing her course work before submitting it. 

As in the other two PDFs viewable in this section of my portfolio, all of my editing suggestions, comments, and corrections are in red font.