Editting Memorandum

To:

Takeshi Nakamura

CC:

[Click here and type name]

From:

Tom Ta

Date:

12/9/2014

Re:

ESL Editing Project

Let me begin by saying that for someone who had only had self-taught
English for several years, you are very creative and descriptive. I love the richness
of details in your storythe descriptions are also very vivid. Although there are
problems that needed to be address, I think this is an excellent start. To help refine
your writing, I have listed a few big things that we will talk about, but I put it here
so you could revise on your own. I have numbered them in the edited copy, so you
know where the problems are.
1.

Gatcha gatcha You started the story with a Japanese onomatopoeia;

however, you switched to English onomatopoeias later on. I recommend
staying consistent. Choose either Japanese or English onomatopoeia and stick
with it.

2.

Right after the dialog you mention that there are many voices, but there is no
clear speaker of this dialog. I recommend stating who the speaker is, so the
readers will not be confused.

3.

From this paragraph onward, I couldnt tell whether or not its a flashback or a
dream. I assumed it was a flashback. I recommend that you cue the readers in
the paragraph before (e.g. memories surfaces in his slumber). This will
improve clarity.

4.

Im lost on the flashback, where and when did this happen? Is the boy older?
As mentioned above, make a clear distinction between the flashback/dreams,
so the readers dont get confused.

5.

Cherry blossom isnt a proper noun; it shouldnt be capitalized.

December 9, 2014

I have also gone through the document and identified recurring errors and put
them into three major areas that you should work on (considering that they are your
weak spots)
Tenses:
There were a lot of places where you wrote, has instead of had. Or you
switch tenses, from past to present and back to the past. I believe you know how
tenses work, but you sometimes change them due to confusion Im guessing. When
it comes to descriptions, if the narrator is describing something long ago, it should
be described with had and other verbs should be past tense, you also do the same
for people.
My suggestion is, keep everything in the past tense. If there is an action, a
description, or an observation that took place in the story, you should make it past
tense. For example, It seem as though death it should be seemed. This webpage
has all of the tenses, complete with detailed descriptions.
http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/verbtenseintro.html also look at this link
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/601/01/ for more info on tenses.
Punctuation:
You used a lot of semicolons; quite a few of them were improper. The use of
the semicolon is hard to understand. You should know that unlike commas and
periods, semicolons are not necessary to make meaningyou can skip it be perfectly
fine. A semicolon is used to connect two independent clauses, where a comma
would turn it into a coma splice, but if you use a period then, youll have two
sentences.
My suggestion would be to not use it at all until you have a better grasp of
other punctuations. Instead, I recommend learning to use em-dash if you would like
to emphasize something. An em-dash is typically used as a comma or parenthesis to
separate out phrasesor even just a wordin a sentence for various reasons. Here
is a punctuation tutorial that you could use to practice by yourself.
(http://owlet.letu.edu/grammarlinks/punctuation/punct1.html)
Vocabulary:
There were places in your piece where you misuse words, and this made them
a bit choppy. For example, aroma instead of stench, aroma implies that
something smells good. Or in a loud whisper, a better sounding alternative would
be hushed voice. I understand what you were trying to say, but a loud whisper
sounds strange.
This is something that is difficult to learn. When I first started to write
extensively in English, I had trouble with this as well. However, I had an electronic
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December 9, 2014

dictionary at the time, and it really helped me pull through. I recommend getting on
thesaurus (http://www.thesaurus.com/), searching for words you like and then
looking up those words in your electronic dictionary. The reason is that not all words
are considered fitting in certain contexts. For example, talk instead of speak the
young man was speaking out, voicing his complaint, he wasnt really talking.
However, you only learn things like that with time and practice. Also, I think if you
read more English literature, youll be able to use the words much more fittingly.
I hope this was helpful to your quest to become a better writer. I hope you will
continue writing and get much better in the future. This has been a great experience,
thanks.