The purpose of this manual is to enable authors of educational materials to plan, organize, and prepare materials in a format that is accurate and clear and that requires a minimum of rewriting and editing before publication. The following topics are discussed: the use of reference and copyrighted materials; the use of illustrations; the…

The National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS) employs a combination of mail, telephone, and personal interview data-gathering techniques. The NLS quality control process begins with editing each returned questionnaire to determine if certain key items are answered and if responses are consistent. If the respondent failed…

This manual contains the procedures to teach the relatively inexperienced author how to enter and process graphic information on a graphics processing system developed by the Training Analysis and Evaluation Group. It describes the illustration processing routines, including scanning graphics into computer memory, displaying graphics, enhancing…

Intended to help students improve their written work by their active involvement and by their interest in investing the time and energy necessary to create a finished product of quality, this booklet presents a structured process that teaches children to progress from a draft to a "published" stage, through individual editing, peer…

Maintaining that two kinds of ambiguity--ambiguous prepositional phrases and ambiguous modification of conjoined elements--account for a large number of ambiguous sentences in technical writing, this paper presents an algebraic analysis of each kind of ambiguity. It then suggests a number of ways in which each ambiguity may be unclear. By using…

A study was conducted to establish whether optimum editorial mixes (mixes of items selected from content categories determined from factor analysis) can be determined by publications editors in attempting to provide wide audience appeal with a minimum number of stories. A questionnaire was designed to determine employee opinions of the Tennessee…

To determine if people who wrote legal documents could read such documents with understanding and rewrite them to be understandable to the general public, eight experienced government writers were asked to rewrite a portion of a government regulation for a general audience. The writers--four lawyers and four nonlawyers--were audio recorded as they…

A 16-page, four-color-on-newsprint magazine, "Krokodil" is among the world's most popular magazines of humor and satire. As a product of the Pravda Publishing House, it is produced by a branch of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, yet there are no official taboos or guidelines. Connections, popularity, and profits give…

It was hypothesized in this study that, because of strong socialization pressures, gatekeepers would have stronger agreement and accuracy relations with the publisher than they would have with the audience and that the gatekeepers' congruency relations with the publisher and audience would not differ significantly. Additionally, research questions…

This paper describes basic skills in terms of three stages of the writing process: drafting, editing, and preservation. During the drafting stage, the basics are those skills and attitudes necessary to release the students' powers of expression. It is basic that they learn how to start and maintain a flow of words and ideas, how to use various…

This paper describes an approach for teachers to use in editing students' poems. The general editorial tactic recommended is for teachers to edit first drafts toward figures of speech, and towards the schemes and tropes that are latent or emergent within the students' writing. It is suggested that teachers avoid dealing directly with the contents…

This style manual, published by the National Education Association (NEA) for writers and editors, has been prepared to update and clarify questions of literary usage. The manual contains sections on abbreviations and symbols, capitalization, dates and time, division of words, foreign words and phrases, italics, lists and enumerations, numbers and…

This handbook was developed for the University of Southern California "Daily Trojan" student newspaper staff and the School of Journalism. It is a compendium of suggestions based on the problems that inexperienced reporters, copyreaders, and new staff members encounter. Contents include "In General," which discusses censorship,…