Copy Editing 

Below is the original copy of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. Following is my edited version fit for a children's audience. After is an edited version suited for adults. Finished is a memo explaining my process. 

This work is done in MS track changes. I am proficient in copy editing done by hand and proofreading symbols. 

COPY

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

Sherman Alexie

Cover Copy

            This 10th Anniversary Edition of Alexie’s award winning coming-of-age story includes a discussion guide and an interview with the author!

            Alexie’s first YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary is a first-person narrative from the perspective of Native American teenager Arnold Spirit, Jr., also known as “Junior", a 14-year-old budding cartoonist. Upon encouragement from a reservation high school teacher, Junior decides to go to an all-white public high school off the rez, in the town of Reardon, Washington. Junior faces discrimination at school and the loss of both friends and family, but he survives—and even grows!—with humor, intelligence, and a great three-point shot. Through Junior’s athletic and academic success at Reardan and his realizations about life on the reservation, Alexie represents a possibility for the success of Indian children—by defeating the expectation that he is doomed to fail, Junior crosses social boundaries and defeats unfavorable odds.

            Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Welpinit, Washington. While living on the reservation, he had to make sacrifices and choices that guided the direction of his future. In Diary, he writes a story about his own personal experiences he faced once he left the reservation, and about his difficult adjustment after his own decision to pursue a better education.

See the copy edited for a children's reading level

See the copy edited for an adult reading level

MEMO

MEMO

To: Mr. Brown

From: Natalie Zunker

Date: March 24, 2017

Re: The Absolute True Diary of a Part Time Indian

Overview

The purpose of this memo is to explain the editing suggestions I have made while reviewing The Absolute True Diary of a Part Time Indian for both a young audience and an adult audience. I have broken down my edits into categories of structural revisions, voice, word-by-word revisions, and queries to the editor for each edit. Below I will explain with examples what I have changed and why in both revisions.

Structural Revisions

In my first edit for the children’s copy of this book I changed the structure of the cover copy to appeal to the interest of a younger audience.  My first instance is this is moving the first sentence to the end of the copy.

Originally, the beginning of the copy reads “This 10th Anniversary Edition of Alexie’s award winning coming-of-age story includes a discussion guide and an interview with the author!” at the very beginning of the text. Because this audience is younger, and likely more interested in the story itself I think changing this aspect will appeal more to their interest of the novel.

I also broke up long sentence structure that would be difficult for this audience to handle. Examples of this include in the first paragraph, I broke up the first sentence into two sentences to make it easier for the reader. I did the same thing in the last sentence by breaking it into two.

In my second revision, I kept the structure of the first sentence at the beginning of the copy because this aspect of the book would appeal to the audience of parents and teachers more.

In both copies, I changed the structure of the text through minor formatting corrections indicated on the style sheet. These include aligning the paragraphs to the left without indents as the original copy had indentation before.

 Voice Revisions

In my first edit for the children’s copy I made several changes regarding voice so that the text would reach a younger audience easier and easier to read.

Examples of this include altering the voice through changing phrases like “first person narrative” to “a story told by” to implement an easier reading level. Another example include altering words like “discrimination” in the first paragraph to “bullying” because this is something children 10 to 16 years old can relate to more at their age.

In my second edit for the adult copy, I didn’t have to make as many voice revisions because the original copy seemed to be more appropriate for an older audience. In doing this, I left phrases like “first person narrative” and words like “discrimination” in the text because these are at more of an adult level.

Word-By-Word Revisions

In my first and second edit, the word-by-word revisions I made were mostly similar. Examples of these similarities include spelling out the word “Young Adult” from YA because the style guide insists on not using abbreviations. I also spelled out the title of the book in both the first and second paragraph because of this reasoning. I changed “Indian” to “Native American” in the last sentence of the first paragraph in both edits to maintain consistency as it was used in place of “Indian” in the first sentence. I also corrected the spelling of both of the cities “Reardan” and “Wellpinit” as they were both spelled incorrectly.

Queries

I only made one query in my editing and that was in the children’s copy. I noted that moving the first sentence to the end of the copy might be in the best interest of the audience in this case. That way the text reads: “This 10th Anniversary Edition of Alexie’s award winning coming-of-age story includes a discussion guide and an interview with the author!” at the end of the text. The query is below.

Query 1: Because this cover copy’s audience is children ages 10 to 16, this aspect of the novel might not be more appealing to the reader than the story itself. Here I suggest putting this sentence at the end of the paragraph to appeal to the reader’s interest. 

Conclusion

The cover copy for this text does a great job of explaining the story the reader will discover within the novel and its relation to the author. This novel appeals to both students and teachers and parents alike, and I believe that my edits for both audiences will reflect that for each copy. I enjoyed editing this piece for both of these audiences, and if there are any questions going further I would be happy to answer them.