I Went Through the Editing Week: Hooray!
My internship journey continued with the article editing week. The editing week took 2 weeks to finish. The article editing week started with a lecturing from Ms. Khair on 12th of August, 2019. The lecturing taught me how to revise the article to ensure the consistency and accuracy in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting. Ms. Khair also gave us examples of grammar mistakes and quizzes about inaccurate use of punctuation, spelling, even capitalization. From the lecturing session, I also found out many things that I thought were correct, turned out to be wrong grammatically.
The editing didn’t only involve grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting. But also ensuring that the writer used the accurate word to describe or define something. As the editor, we have to change the informal word or inaccurate word used, and find the best synonym to replace those words. Also, there were so many terms for programs, institutions, or organizations in Indonesia that I have to highlight and make sure the English translation is accurate and consistent throughout the article. The article that I need to edit was from the Mendeley tasks given a week before. There were four articles that I must edit.
My first article had so many grammatical mistakes, and I should also replace lots of words. The first article took me about 3 hours to edit and even almost 2 hours to revise. As that was my first revision session, it took me quite some time to understand the article’s structure and determine what should be included in the article and what should not. The first article also really challenged my English skill as I rarely even write in English after high school.
As my first article approval really took me quite some time, I ensured that the next articles should have less revision. The second and third articles editing went smoothly. I only have to change the names of institutions, programs and some wrong terms. However, the last article really took me and Ms. Khair so much time to revise as it contained many informal words and inaccurate terms. Those informal words should be replaced with more academic words as it is a scientific article. The last article took even more than 2 hours to revise.
After my four articles got approval by Ms. Khair, I got quite deep understanding about scientific article writing.
This week really showed me that a great article doesn’t only come from the research’s result, but also the author’s writing style. I really am thankful for this experience as I don’t have any experience and only a very small interest on writing.
I barely had any knowledge about article structure, conformity and so on. Yes, this week was also a great struggle for me. But, the editing week really prepares me to write my own scientific article as it is one of the requirements for my graduation.
