Reflection Advanced Editing Project: Disaster Handbook Throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies, I'd intended to take Dr.

Cindy Nahrwold's class, "Tech Style and Editing." I felt that every good writer must at some point develop her editing skills, dull and mechanical as the process might be. Yet, semester after semester, when offered, the class just didn't fit into my schedule. As I edged closer and closer to the end of my college career, I began to think it never would. It eventually did, but not in the way I'd thought. Instead, the semester I finally had an empty slot in my schedule, Spring of 2012, I discovered that Dr. Nahrwold's "Advanced Editing" class was being offered. And although I knew it was the class slated to be taken after "Tech Style and Editing" I thought I'd check with Dr. Nahrwold about taking it anyway. She assured me that I would be able to do the work, her only suggestion being that I might want to brush up on my copyediting symbols since we would not be covering those in class. Admission was no problem because I'd taken Dr. Chuck Anderson's Editing for Publication class a few years before. So I did end up taking the classes in reverse order, with "Tech Style and Editing" being taken in the fall. I entered the class, "Advanced Editing," that spring with some trepidation, wondering if I really did have a firm enough foundation for the class. But I soon found that as long as I kept up with the class work and homework and paid attention, I did well. And the most pleasant surprise was that I just soaked up the information about editing until it was almost pouring out of me. I looked forward to the class, the discussions, the lectures, and the readings. Suddenly I was all about editing, having discovered a new love and a new me. I couldn't get over the discovery that editing was more than just rearranging the punctuation on a page and slashing through wrongly capitalized letters. On some level, I had probably known the truth but just hadn't taken a close enough look! I'd also begun an editing internship that semester in the Communications Department of the Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, on the advice of my graduate adviser Dr. Karen Kuralt. I found out that I had the best of all worlds there in that I was able to get realworld editing practice in an error-friendly supportive environment. The work atmosphere was easygoing and the assignments were fairly straightforward if somewhat challenging, due to my lack of experience. I worked on a variety of newsletters, flyers, forms, calendars, 4H documents, and various other pieces, sometimes working in hardcopy but generally using the track changes function of the Word program. Each day at the Extension, I looked forward to tackling these challenges and to using both my innate and newly-learned editing skills. And the class and internship blended together so well that I was able to choose a major editing project for class from among the Extension's many departments. Our assignment was to locate a hands-on editing project to complete for a real-world client

Reflection_Disaster Handbook 2 of our choosing. Our clients could be businesses or nonprofits, large or small, who had a large document or set of documents, maybe even a manual or handbook, that needed extensive editing. We could edit either online or paper documents, or both. The scope of our projects should be such, though, that we had enough material to keep us focused and busy for the semester, yet not so much that we felt overwhelmed. This rather vague requirement actually proved to be the most difficult criterion of all for me.. Yet at the start, I looked forward to the project, particularly because I had an excellent resource to begin with in my search for a client. I felt certain that my boss, Mary Hightower, the Associate Director of the Communications Department, would be able to help me locate a client from within the many departments there. In spite of her super-busy schedule, she was, in fact, gracious enough to send out email inquiries for me to the various departments. As replies came in, she kept me posted and even discussed all of the possibilities with me, advising me about the pros and cons of each potential project. I took a few days to choose my project, finally choosing the one I kept coming back to. The Department of Community and Economic Development had a disaster manual that required extensive revision. I chose the project because I really liked the department's overall plan to condense and revise the information, to transform it into a user-friendly handbook that would be used by individuals and families all over the state. When completed, the handbook would be adapted for use on the Extension's website and it would also be available in hardcopy to every county in the state. I was very excited at the prospect of playing a vital role in this important work. To get started, I met initially with Deborah Tootle, an Associate Professor within the Department of Community and Economic Development. She and my own boss, Mary, had actually teamed up to supervise my work on the project. Deborah explained that I would be basically jumpstarting a long-term project. My contribution would lay the foundation for future work on constructing the finished product of the proposed handbook. At that first eye-opening meeting, I discovered that this 230-page volume of disaster material was contained in a large, white, three-ring binder and was a random conglomeration of documents written by various Extension professors and engineers. Many of the documents were duplicates and many contained redundant material, much of it densely written and formatted into huge blocks of text. At this point, I did begin to wonder if I'd committed to a project that was too big for me, a worry that would haunt me to the finish line. But I took a deep inner breath in that moment, pushed aside my worries, and began to ask questions. I made sure, first of all, that I had a clear understanding of the department's needs and expectations for the project, and I took notes on how to proceed. I was then handed a copy of the binder itself, with permission to keep and use it. I took a quick glance through it, asking more questions and taking further notes as I went. I answered Deborah's questions as well and felt, at the end of it, that we'd had a very productive meeting. I particularly appreciated the valuable advice and suggestions she gave me.

Reflection_Disaster Handbook 3 She encouraged me, in that first meeting, to use lots of bulleted lists in my work, as well as several levels of headings, and short sentences and paragraphs, using language that is easyto-read and understand. Users should be able to grab the book, she said, turn to the correct reference section, and locate the needed information quickly. If they are in the middle of an emergency situation, they should be able to tell almost a glance what they need to do. (Although, granted, much of the information in the handbook was for use after the disaster had occurred, for recovery, or even beforehand, in preparation). I could tell right away that it was going to be an interesting challenge to juggle the demands of the project itself and of the class assignments required for the project. I was proved right, in many respects. For one thing, our meetings became a problem, as did email exchanges. Although we had agreed in our initial meeting to meet several times throughout the semester to keep the project on track, it was understood that because Deborah and Mary were often out of town on business, meetings could only be set a meeting at a time. And as it turned out, a few did have to be canceled and rescheduled because either Mary or Deborah was called out of town unexpectedly. Also, due to their busy schedules, they weren't always able to send timely answers to my emails, which naturally slowed down my progress at times. Although I had questions that needed answers right away, I didn't want to bother them with too many emails but really had no way otherwise to get in touch with them. So I'd have to put some things on hold until I had an answer. Meanwhile, Dr. Nahrwold required that a detailed project proposal be written and submitted to her and to our clients and later a detailed progress report. We were also assigned an oral presentation on our projects, to be given toward the end of the semester. Finally, we were to submit our final projects, (a set of the unedited originals and of the edited finals), all in hardcopy, to her on the same date that our final drafts were due to our clients. The only troublesome part of dealing with the class documents, however, came when I had to compose the required schedule/deadlines table for the project proposal. The schedule and the deadlines Dr. Nahrwold had set and those of my project supervisors were often at odds. I included the schedule items and deadlines for both my professor and my clients in the table, however, and as I expected, I was later questioned by Dr. Nahrwold about why I included certain items and deadlines that didn't make sense to her. I had to explain that Deborah and Mary had set additional criteria that I needed to meet in order to satisfy their particular needs and expectations for the project. For one thing, they had requested weekly updates on my progress in the form of reports sent via email. I was to list each document I worked on the week before and give a short summary of the work done on that document. In the end, I decided not to give my clients their copy of the class progress report: this would have only added a layer of confusion since they were already receiving weekly reports. Thankfully, I didn't have any other issues with class documents. Unfortunately this was not so with the project documents, the group meetings, and the project in general. The first issue that caused me major alarm was the change in audience focus. My clients decided a few weeks into the project that instead of creating a handbook that would appeal

Reflection_Disaster Handbook 4 to Arkansas residents in general, they wanted to create, instead, one that specifically targeted producers (farmers) and farm families. Although I could appreciate their desire to reach out to this particular audience, since a huge part of the Extension's mission is to support farmers and farm families, I was really unhappy about the switch. I knew that I didn't have any real say in the matter, however. So except for a rather timid remark I made stating that I knew absolutely nothing about farms and farming (being a city girl), I didn't offer any other opinions on the matter at the moment. At any rate, they assured me that this shouldn't be an issue. I might have agreed except for one thing. I was informed shortly afterward that I would be the person choosing which of the documents to include in the handbook and which to delete. Whoa! I thought. How in the world can I possibly make quality decisions when I have no idea what goes on in the mind of a farmer? After all, some of the documents had names such as, "Drought-Stricken Forages," and "Flood-Related Diseases in Poultry and Livestock." I didn't feel at all equipped to make decisions about what exact disaster information farmers needed or wanted! I said as much and was reassured that they trusted me to do a good job weeding out the unnecessary and keeping or merging the useful. If unsure, I could always ask, they said. I was stunned, but what could I do? Their minds were set, the decision was made and I would just have to do the best I could. Knowing how busy the ladies stayed, and knowing how I hate to be a pest, I knew that I wouldn't be asking them very often. This proved to be true, particularly because I found that I was dealing with a total of 90 documents, not including duplicates, most of them multi-page documents, categorized into 16 sections, a total of over 230 pages of material. Because so many of the document titles were long, I decided to use alphabet letters to label the sections and I then numbered the documents within each section. For instance, L9, "Electrical Safety" was Document 9, in Section L, the section on safety. Of course, the new, shorter handbook would be organized differently, but for my purposes this was a useful system to work with. I started the real work of the project by locating all of the duplicate documents, over 20 total. After pulling these out, I read through every single remaining document, making notes as I went a time-consuming and exhausting task, but one that my conscience wouldn't let me skip. I labeled each as a "Keep," "Delete," or "Maybe" document. I then used these labels as headings for a general outline that I put together at the request of my clients, although I would have created one anyway since outlines help keep me organized. I even went on to break down this huge general outline into three separate outlines according to major headings, so that I could look at and use each document as needed. When it came time to do the actual editing work, I used the "Keep" outline and its associated documents with notes to begin, having chosen about 38 out of the 90 to include in the handbook. A few of the "Keep" documents didn't make the final cut, so that I was left with about 36 documents in the final draft. I never had time to even touch the "Maybe" documents, a fact that nagged at my conscience long after the project was complete. One of the toughest parts of the project is that I had to literally type all of the original "Keep" documents into the system, instead of simply scanning them in, having given in to

Reflection_Disaster Handbook 5 my unwise but ingrained habit of jotting notes and scribbling on paper documents. Another grueling task. The upside to this is that I was forced to read through the material yet again as I typed it, becoming even more familiar with it, which helped tremendously with the tasks of deciding which sentences and paragraphs to keep and which to delete. With each document, I deleted material that was either redundant or irrelevant. Then I worked to reorganize the rest. Sometimes the documents were merged together into one. For instance, the tornado document I produced is a compilation of about six tornado documents. It wasn't hard to combine them since the material either fit together easily or was repetitive and deleted anyway. For most of the documents, I used several bulleted lists, as my clients suggested, cutting wordiness and jargon, rearranging all of the remaining text. I used document formatting devices such as bolding, italics, a few colors, and plenty of white space. I included some of the most crucial information as a "Note," a "Caution," or a "Warning," at the suggestion of Dr. Nahrwold. I used three levels of headings, trying to stay within the 4-point rule that Dr. Nahrwold strongly advocated. Since I didn't want my smallest level of text to be any smaller than 12 font, this brought me up to a 24 font level for my document titles. I wasn't happy with this, but wasn't sure how to get around it, although I did experiment with different font styles to see if others worked better with the application of this rule. I finally decided on the Arial style for headings, which worked as well or better than most in showing the distinction between headings while not making the 24 font enormous...well, comparatively speaking. There were numerous other formatting issues that I agonized over throughout the project, while striving to meet the expectations of two separate audiences my instructor and my clients. While Dr. Nahrwold did have very strict and detailed formatting criteria that I needed to meet, my clients preferred an overall simpler format. As time ran out, I began to realize that I had to decide on one format for both audiences. The decision was made simple, though, when I realized that although my client would prefer a simpler format, their primary needs were the simplicity of the text itself and the overall reorganization of the material into less dense, more manageable pieces . I knew that I had met their needs and expectations in this regard, as the following documents demonstrate. And although I used the same basic process in working with all of the documents I edited for the project, each document is somewhat unique in its organization and overall design. Doc. I-1 Emergency Procedures: Floods and Flash Floods As in most of the original disaster documents, much of the text in this one is densely written as several sentences within paragraphs. The numbered items in a list are often in the form of unnecessary sentences which could be broken down into bullet points. For example, for the final draft , under the category, "Farm Preparation for Floods," (page 2, original; page 3, final), I broke down sentences 5, 6, and 7 into bulleted lists. Sentences 5 and 6 both contain items to be moved to "high, dry locations" before a flood, so I combined

Reflection_Disaster Handbook 6 the items into one bulleted list. Likewise, I created a specific bullet point list for items that should be tied down, as listed in sentence 7. I knew that these and all of the bulleted lists I compiled would facilitate reading for the Extension's audience. Another change I made was to break down the "Evacuation Safety Rules" (page 3, original; page 4, final) into short onesentence bullet points, with each sentence fitting on one line. I believe this makes the bullets that much easier to read, particularly if they need to be read quickly. Doc. J3 Keeping Food Safe During an Emergency The original document is broken into two main headings. The first one is called, "The ABC's of Keeping Food Safe in an Emergency." Five paragraphs of information follow. Much of this information can be broken down into bulleted lists, which I did, of course, for the final document. From this information, I created one bulleted list that I called, "Steps you can take to keep food cold" (page 1, original; pages 1-2, final). The reader should find this list useful and less cumbersome than trying to navigate the five paragraphs. The second section listed in the original document is titled, "Frequently Asked Questions" (bottom of page 1, original). The six questions listed are answered in blocks of text, sometimes in several paragraphs. I got rid of the questions, breaking them down into reader-friendly categories for bulleted lists some of the questions being divided into more than one category. Headings of various levels were then created to guide audiences to section(s) of interest. The original questions asked about such issues as the safety of drinking water and food after a flood, and how to sanitize cookware afterwards, among a number of other issues (page 4, original). After beginning with a warning to throw away all food that had been exposed to floodwaters, I created one list titled, "Cookware and dishes affected by floodwaters." Under this category, I created three sub-categories, with lists for items to be discarded, items that could washed in hot, soapy water, and a list of others that could be sanitized through boiling or by soaking them in a bleach solution. At a glance, readers will know from these lists how to treat specific items. Doc. O-5 Farm Practices During Ice and Snow I discovered that even the title of this one was misleading: the document is not a general explanation of safe farm practices in freezing weather conditions, but instead focuses on driving tractors in ice and snow. I even included a suggestion, under the main title itself, about renaming the document. At any rate, I made sure that the main title within the document announced the real subject. Although the document is short, it's still written in paragraph form, which its readers would likely find tedious. To break the information down into categories for bullet lists, I went through the text, finding and making note of significant tractor-related terminology. I have to confess that I didn't have a clue what ballasting meant, but thankfully, my husband did.

Reflection_Disaster Handbook 7 By combining what I learned from my husband and the document itself, I came up with three descriptive categories to assist the reader, "Braking Ability," "Ballasting," and "General Precautions." I also kept sentences as short as I could to help with ease of reading. Doc P2 Firewise Landscaping for Woodland Homes This original document was actually one of the better formatted of all the disaster documents that I worked with. I was actually able to retain some of the original formatting, particularly the bulleted lists of suggested trees and shrubs. I also kept the zone headings since I felt this was a sensible way to keep the area-specific information divided for fireconscious homeowners. The major revision chore, as usual, was the breakdown of dense textual material, found on the first page and half of the document. I was relieved to find that most of it was easily divided into several short, succinct lists. As with many of the bulleted lists I produced for the disaster documents, I purposely began many of the bulleted lists in this particular document with action verbs. For instance, on page 2, under Zone 2, I put together a bullet list, the items of which begin with the following verbs: maintain, plant, space, and prune. In another case, under the heading "Build and Landscape with Fire in Mind," on page 3, I used the verbs: build, examine, make, enclose, and use. I made the decision to use action verbs as often as possible, in all of the disaster documents, using the parallelism for consistency, but also because it seems that action verbs always catch the eye of the reader and the eye that is "caught" will usually finish the sentence. As a final reflection on the project as a whole, I can honestly say that I hadn't realized in the beginning that so much of my editing work would involve formatting issues. And although I feel that I do a fair job of using basic formatting devices to design usable documents, I also realize that my strength is in working with text, rather than design. And so, for this project, I feel that much of the design I used was somewhat overdone. I've never been truly satisfied with the final drafts of my documents. My consolation is in remembering that I was told, in that first conversation with Deborah, that she and Mary primarily just needed a solid first draft that they could build upon. When the final project draft was, at long last, submitted to them, they both expressed their sincere thanks, (and Mary actually did so several times), saying that I had saved them time and energy by doing the preliminary work of going in and cutting, sorting, reorganizing, condensing, and clarifying the information. I sincerely hope that the work produced by this project has provided a solid foundation for the planned disaster handbook.