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Methods and theories of the editing practice

The following includes the methods and theories and their purposes used by Garie McIntosh for advanced editing.

Syntax & semantics

To resolve semantic ambiguity through understanding of syntactic structures, such as complementizers, complements and complex noun phrases

  1. Movement rules
  2. Filler-gap dependency with WH-questions and Filler-gap dependency with relative clauses
  3. Resumptive Pronouns (pronominalization of co-referentials)
  4. The four types of complements in English (Wh-complementizers)
  5. Relative-clause formation: The two types if Complex NPs (relative clauses & noun phrase complements, i.e., picture nouns)
  6. Shifts, extrapositioning and displacement
  7. Resolving semantic ambiguity
  8. Nominal clauses: defining relative clauses, nominal relative clauses and interrogative wh-clauses
  9. Reducing relative clauses
  10. The No-touch rule

Coordination (parallelism)

To establish the grammatical relationship of one constituent to another by formulation of certain structures via the rules that govern their formation

  1. The syntactic structure of coordination

Readability elements

To ensure competence in storytelling timelines through establishing related actions, and grammatical integrity by addressing syntax and semantics, simultaneous actions and attitude of the speaker (grammatical mood)

  1. The three kinds of verbal phrases: participial, gerund and infinitive
  2. Grammatical notions of tense and aspect
  3. Linguistic modality
  4. Grammatical moods

Writing operations and constructs

To bring focus to how to achieve a diplomatic, polemic or trenchant effect in narrative

  1. Enunciative operations
  2. Nominalization: Lexical metaphor (variation in meaning of a given expression) vs. Grammatical metaphor (nominalization)
  3. Appositive relative clauses (ARCs): Polyphony and subjectivity in ARCs