Specialized Writing in English
Review
Melissa DunLany, PhD – melissa.dunlany@unige.ch
Specialized Writing in English – Class 11
Today’s class
• Review last week’s in-
class assignment and
homework
• Semester recap
• Em dash
• Exam logistics
• Looking forward
Review of last week’s editing
• See Moodle, Class 11
Review of last week’s homework –
exam prep
• See Moodle, Class 11, “Exam prep – sample
answer”
Looking back
• Plain English
• Inclusive writing
• Editing techniques
Looking back
• Web writing: personal bios
• Academic writing: abstracts, hedging
• Précis writing: summary records
• Business writing: Email conventions and
formality, cover emails
Recurring themes
• Concision
• Context
• Cultural writing conventions
Editing
• The human element
• Real world editing vs. classroom editing
Before editing
• What are your instructions?
• What is the text genre?
• Who is the text’s recipient?
Start editing
• Read the whole text, when possible.
• Identify structural issues.
• Identify content issues.
Start micro-editing
• Keeping the above-mentioned considerations
in mind, make edits to the text for:
– Clarity
– Concision
– Correctness
Consider how to edit
• Track changes on or off?
• Comments?
Punctuation
• Punctuation shows how words and strings of
words are related, separated, and
emphasized.
• Its main purpose is to help the reader
understand the sentence’s meaning.
Disclaimer:
• No two writers will ever agree on the position
of every comma, dash, or period.
• Dash (–) / Em dash
• Dashes are sometimes used singly to indicate
the start of an aside, explanation, or addition:
• Justifying their case, smokers introduce a
herring so red that it glows like coal: that if
their illnesses are self-inflicted, well, so are
most people’s – look at traffic accidents, look
at potholers.
Dashes can add emphasis, too:
• He shot big game for status, pleasure – and
greed.
When used in pairs, dashes draw special
attention to the phrase they surround:
• Visitors may stay overnight – or for as long as
they wish – in the hostel run by the friars.
• The em dash is an attention-seeking dash.
• The em dash emphasizes, whereas
parentheses minimize.
Compare
• Oscar said he would help with the play – but
not direct it – in the coming months.
• Oscar said he would help with the play (but
not direct it) in the coming months.
In translation
Louis, celui-là même qui lui a fait chavirer le
coeur il y a 20 ans, est de retour en ville.
Louis – the man who stole her heart 20 years
ago – is back in town.
The difference between hyphens, em dashes
and en dashes:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-
play/em-dash-en-dash-how-to-use
Exam tips
Exam tips
Become familiar with the resources
available:
• OED, Merriam-Webster (Thesaurus
search)
• WordReference
Exam tips
• Set the proofing language to
English
• For editing, take the time to
reflect on the audience, the text
type, the medium, the message,
etc. before diving in
Exam tips
For the editing part of the exam, please
copy and paste the text and make your
changes in the second text without using
Track Changes.
Exam tips
For part 2, “Identifying the most important
edits”:
• Be concrete and provide examples to
illustrate.
• Relate the edits to the text type, audience,
and purpose when possible.
Exam tips
For part 3, “Short answer”:
• Organize your thoughts before writing.
• Proofread the final product.
Areas to explore
Master’s thesis topics
• Emailing across cultures: a comparison of
email practices in __ and __
• Translating plain language
• Inclusive writing in the corporate world
• How translation agencies market themselves:
an analysis of online mission statements
Master’s thesis topics
• Differences in abstracts across cultures
• How English is used in global food marketing
• Comparative analysis of summary records in
English and another language
• Multilingual plain language in Switzerland
Some fun English/translation-
related resources
Explore
• Anthony Pym’s YouTube page:
https://www.youtube.com/@Anthony
Pym
• Check out “Sentence length in
Academic English”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z
_ndJRczpPU
Explore
Dot Robert’s podcast,
“Meet the translator”:
https://www.dotroberts
translation.com/podcas
t
