Demo Edit 6 (Optional)

In this next module, I’m going to walk you through how I would edit a student’s essay from a previous course.

Take a minute now and pause the video and read the entire essay. I’ve also provided a text file if you want to read it there.

If you have time, try to edit it on your own. And then restart the video and I’ll walk you through how I would approach the edit. So this essay deals with a really great topic, a phobia of dentists. I didn’t realize that there was a formal phobia of dentistry.

It’s called “odontaphobia”. But great topic, really draws the reader in. And I was interested to read about this.

The main thing that I’m going to suggest for this author, the one thing that this essay needs a little work on, is that I’m not entirely sure what the main point of this essay is.

The author is going to need to add a paragraph probably right after the first paragraph that tells the reader exactly what they’re trying to accomplish in this essay. What is the point of this essay?

And I can make some guesses about it, but it’s unclear if it’s about the paper, the treatment, is it advice for dentist. It’s a little unclear exactly what the goal of this essay is. So the author will need to add a paragraph here to bring that out.

And I’m going to make a guess about what their intention might be here, but just for the purposes of illustration. The other thing is I’m going to reorganize this essay a little bit.

Because I’m not entirely sure what the main point of this essay is, the organization strikes me as needing a little bit of reorganization to make the flow.

And, of course, the exact flow and organization will depend on what the main point of the essay is. Other than that, the language is fairly easy to understand. I didn’t have any trouble understanding this.

So this is what I mean they are going to rearrange, I’m going to make a few changes here and there to improve the language, but mostly I’m just going to deal with organization and focus. So starting with the beginning, 60% of the world’s population is afraid somehow to go to the dentist.

I’m not sure that we need to be so exact here. I’m not sure where the 60% comes from.

So maybe we can just say what everybody knows to be true, which is, most people are afraid to go to the dentist. We don’t need the word ‘somehow,’ of course, here.

Most people are afraid to go to the dentist. Perhaps, we don’t need to give the exact statistic here, because I’m a little skeptical about where that came from.

But 15 to 20%, and maybe we say exactly 15 to 20% of whom. I’m going to say maybe of adults worldwide. I get the sense that this is a worldwide focus here, so maybe a 15, 20% of adults worldwide suffer a more severe fear. Colon.

I was going to use the colon, odontaphobia. And you, of course, are giving an exact statistic here, this 15 to 20%, we’re going to need a reference to say where that came from. Perhaps, that came from the World Health Organization, which is mentioned in the next sentence, but it’s unclear. so we actually need the reference right there for that particular statistic.

I’m actually going to delete this next sentence about the World Health Organization recognizing it as this severe fear. I’ve already said what it is, that it’s a severe fear in the first sentence.

I don’t think we need a separate sentence for that.

The main thing that the author is trying to achieve in this first paragraph, I think, is to differentiate for the reader, which is very important, what’s the difference between just having a normal fear of the dentist and having odontophobia, which is this more severe fear.

What’s the line between those two things? I think the author has done a good job of giving us some sense of why those two things are different and how odontaphobia maybe is even diagnosed. The author may want to give a little bit more if there’s some diagnostic criteria or something.

But I think I would probably just recommend moving the sentence about the symptoms to right after the first line, because they mentioned, you know, most people are afraid but some people have a more severe fear. Maybe just describe right there what that more severe fear looks like. So this is a kind of a list of a lot of medical jargon, so I’m also going to eliminate some of that medical jargon.

So maybe we say sufferers, just jump right into what they experience, sufferers may, instead of hyperventilation, let’s make this into a verb, hyperventilate. They may hyperventilate.

Tachycardia, hypertension, sudden drop in blood pressure; some of those are medical jargon, so let’s change all of that to, may hyperventilate, experience sudden changes in heart rate and blood pressure. Transpiration is just sweating, so let’s just say sweat. And I’m just going to truncate this and just say, and vomit.

Sufferers may hyperventilate, experience sudden changes in heart rate and blood pressure, sweat and vomit, or vomit, we should probably put, because they may not experience all of these symptoms, or vomit when just thinking about the dentist’s chair.

And then I might move the word “sweat” up here, because this is kind of a long description, experience sudden changes, so it flows a little better if we put hyperventilates, sweat and then this kind of longer inscription or vomit when they were just thinking about the dentist chair. And I don’t think we need to list all of the symptoms here. I think we just need enough to give the reader a sense of that this is pretty severe.

Then because we referred here to sufferers, we can say, instead of this fear often leads people, we can just say, they avoid, the sufferers, which we just referred to in the last sentence, they avoid.

This is another thing that distinguishes odontophobia from people who just have kind of a normal fear of the dentist.

The people who have it actually avoid going to the dentist until emergencies happen. I’ll changed this to, until it’s an emergency, although I can go either way on that one.

And then at which time, I’ll change this to, at which time they may require invasive treatments. This should be a that instead of a which; invasive treatments that reinforce. I don’t think we need a can there, that reinforce, and then we don’t need to repeat fear of dentistry.

We could just say, “that reinforce their phobia”. I even added the word “traumatic” in here.

So I don’t know if that’s necessary, but they avoid going to the dentist until it’s an emergency at which time they may require traumatic invasive treatments that can reinforce their phobia.

So that first paragraph gives us a nice summary of what odontophobia is and what it looks like.

And then in this next paragraph, I’m actually going to add a paragraph here, because I feel like I need to know where this essay is going to. So we’ve got the description of odontophobia. But what’s the point of this essay? Is it to describe new treatments for odontophobia? Is it to give advice for dentists?

I’m going to just put something in here, which I think could be the focus. I’m not sure.

Maybe something like, “Fortunately, dentists have many options,” because this seems to be going through a litany of different treatment options.

Have many options for treating and managing their patients with odontophobia. I’m a little bit targeting this essay as if it’s targeted towards dentists. The author doesn’t have to do that.

If that wasn’t their intent, it would be very easy to take out the dentist part here, but that’s what I thought, maybe they were trying to do here.

And I think what’s really interesting and what the authors spend the most time on here, is they talk about all these kind of simple low-cost interventions that you can do instead of like having to go to a psychotherapist or take drugs. So I think maybe that’s the main focus, the main point here.

So I’m going to say, “Besides conventional therapies,” so the author here referred to behavioral and pharmacological approaches, I’m going to call that, beside conventional treatments.

I’m going to call that treatments, because I’m going to use therapies in the next second here.

And then set off with dashes, which includes behavioral therapy, that’s your typical psychological therapy, behavioral therapy and drugs.

So I’m just putting those examples in dashes. Some surprisingly simple, low-cost interventions may also be quite effective. So I’m just making a note to the author that they need to clearly state the main point of the essay here.

And if I haven’t got it quite right, they may want to tweak this a little bit.

But I think the idea is that besides conventional treatments there are some surprisingly simple low-cost interventions out there that might be quite effective as well.

The one that struck me was this idea of pumping the smell of coffee and fresh bread through the dentist’s office. That seems like a great idea. So that’s simple and low-cost.

So this next paragraph then, in terms of organization, I’m going to make the next paragraph just be about a whole bunch of simple things that the dentists can do to improve their office to make it more friendly for these types of patients.

So I’ve already kind of said, the pharmacological and behaviorals, let’s get rid of that.

The next sentence talks about the sensorial stimuli, and the sentence after that talks about the sensorial stimuli. So I thought we could combine those two sentences.

This sentence here is just a description of the different types of sensorial stimuli that you can use.

So I’m going to start with, a recent study from the National Italian Union of Dental Industry showed that sensorial stimuli, and let me give you some examples here, with using, sending this off with dashes.

So those would include things like the pleasant smells. So sensorial stimuli, so pleasant odors like fresh bread or coffee, warm colors of the place.

We don’t need of the place, just warm colors, pleasant music or beautiful paintings on the walls.

So those are all the examples. And then putting back the dash here.

And then we get, are decisive from the psychological perspective of patients and can be preferable than the use anti- These are anxiolytics or anti-anxiety drugs.

I think we can say this a little bit more crisply to maybe just work as well as anti-anxiety drugs for many patients. I don’t know if that’s true. I am assuming that this study kind of talked about the effectiveness of these, if that’s even been ever researched.

So I’m just kind of guessing here but maybe they work as well as anti-anxiety drugs for many patients, or many patients prefer them, or give something about exactly what the study tells us about the effectiveness of these stimuli.

Then we get a list of drugs.

Since I’m going to make this paragraph about the simple non-drug interventions, I’m going to move the drug list down to a lower paragraph.

I’ll get back to the drugs in a few minutes here. This next paragraph is about, again, simple steps the dentist can take in the dentist office.

So I think we can full this next paragraph right here into that the previous paragraph.

They’re still talking about that same Italian study. The study concluded that, so I think it’s fair to kind of put this all into one.

So I’m going to start with, “Dentists can also ease patient’s fears by”, and then the author had a nice colon here followed by a list.

I think we’ll just stick with that. So I’m just going to introduce this list very directly.

There are other simple steps the dentists can take.

Can also ease patients’ fears by- Now, I need like -ing verbs, gerunds, and so I’m going to change this to, by transmitting, by telling and showing, by offering it.

We have to make sure that we keep this parallel by starting each of these items with an -ing verb.

So transmitting serenity and friendliness, I don’t think we need, by taking the time to chat with the patient. I think we can- That’s just extra.

By telling and showing, I think we can just make that a little bit shorter by saying, by explaining what is going to be done, offering earphones to isolate them from external sound and at the same time provide music therapy.

We can just say, and provide music therapy. It’s doing both at once.

Adjusting, again making these all -ing verbs to be parallel. Adjusting the chair to the patient dimensions. I think probably the point of that is to improve comfort.

So I might be just saying what the point of adjusting the chair, so adjusting the chair to improve comfort, providing an image. How about projecting an image rather than providing?

Just a slightly better verb there.

Projecting an image of quality and professional demeanor, and offering a well-illuminated place with plenty of space.

And, again, this last item here is the drug, so I’m going to talk about drugs later.

So, now, we get one paragraph that has all of these different simple interventions that the dentist can do right at the dental office.

If you scroll down for a minute to the very last paragraph, the author brings up a new idea right in the last paragraph about the idea of internet- based treatments.

And it seems to be potentially low-cost simple intervention.

So I’m actually going to move this whole idea up about the Internet-based treatments, then delete it from the last paragraph and give it its own paragraph following along this theme of low-cost simple interventions.

So researchers are also studying, so are now focusing on anything I would say are also studying the use of internet-based treatments.

I don’t think we need to repeat confronting anxiety.

We know anxiety is involved here.

So, are also studying internet-based treatments and online support communities, just to describe what those internet-based treatments entail. Online support communities may help odontophobics.

And I feel like we need some more information about these studies.

So if this author is trying to tell us about these low-cost simple interventions and these new potential treatments, we would want to add some more details about this here, about these studies on internet-based therapies. So that should be kind of its own paragraph, I think.

And then we will get in the next paragraph.

We’ll get finally back to the drug therapy.

So I think we do have to mention the drug therapies, because probably some patients have to have drugs to do this.

So maybe, you know, even in addition to some of these great simple low-cost interventions, some patients are still going to need traditional drug therapy. Some patients will still require drugs to manage anxiety or pain.

And then those drugs would include pharmacological options. These aren’t all drugs you would take by mouth.

So, it’s the pharmacological options include, and here’s a list of them. Intraligament- I can’t pronounce that word. That’s just the anesthetics that you take that are injected into the teeth.

So we could just say local anesthetics or anesthetic injections.

I’m not sure what computer-controlled injections are and how that differs from anesthetic injection, so I think I’ll just get rid of that for now.

Sedation, so anesthetic injection, sedation with nitrous oxide, anti-anxiety drugs, which I took away. I took that out of an earlier place. I’m going to put that back, so anti-anxiety drugs. And then, finally, general anesthesia is the other one.

I mean, general anesthesia would put somebody completely under. So that’s another option. So those are all of the pharmacological options.

We probably need some more details to flesh out this paragraph here about just what are some potential harm. If this essay is about alternatives, so what are some potential harms for drug therapy? Do they maybe not always work?

So maybe more details about the risks and benefits of drug therapy.

And then finally, we will need some kind of concluding paragraph that gets- Again, the concluding paragraph may depend a little bit on what is the actual focus, the theme, of this essay.

But I like this sentence here, “Oral hygiene continues to be the best way to avoid going to the dentist”. Making that point, I think, is important.

I would say by now, but may be good oral hygiene continues to be the best way to avoid going to the dentist, but that doesn’t solve the phobia indeed.

And you know, even if you’re great at oral hygiene, you still might have to go to the dentist for an emergency, as the author alluded to earlier, so we still need to solve this problem about the phobia.

I wasn’t quite sure how to conclude this, because, again, I’m not quite sure of the exact focus of this essay.

But if we’re focusing in that dentist, that advice for dentists, you could say something like, “Dentists should consider the wide range of options for helping patients with odontophobia to successfully receive dental care”.

So maybe this essay, the point is just to let dentists know about all these wide different options that are out there.

Maybe we need a little bit more of a conclusion.

Again, if the essay is trying to make a point, if there’s a clear point here, it would be nice for the author to wrap up here with kind of restating the point of the essay.