Been writing for a few hours. Anyone want to help?

[73BARMYPgsp]

So, I am on a roll but I am getting tired. Anyone want to edit this paragraph from my dissertation for clarity? No holds barred--and no--"deployers" is not a word in the dictionary, but it is in the study I am citing.

Most recently, there have been 5 Mental Health Assessment Teams (MHAT) deployed into the Iraq theatre of operations armed with surveys and given to currently deployed soldiers and Marines. The MHAT reports include robust findings about morale, specific deployment related issues and current stressors. These reports also include recommendations which are broken into sections: pre-deployment, deployment and post deployment. In all 5 of the MHAT reports, the notion of assessing the soldier’s pre-deployment current level of stress is conspicuously absent. Although the MHAT surveys do distinguish soldiers on the dimension of component (active duty vs. reservist) the pre-deployment stressors that are unique to guard and reserve soldiers is not addressed. Therefore, it is not known whether undetected pre-deployment issues that only guard and reservists must deal with could have confounded the outcomes of the MHAT surveys. However, one finding from the MHAT studies is particularly relevant to the current study. It revealed that deployment length and family separation were the top 2 non-combat stressors for both active duty and reserve component soldiers. This again, would argue for early detection of higher than usual experienced stress regarding these issues. These numbers are also significantly higher for multiple deployers.

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[Therapist4Chnge]

So, I am on a roll but I am getting tired. Anyone want to edit this paragraph from my dissertation for clarity? No holds barred--and no--"deployers" is not a word in the dictionary, but it is in the study I am citing.

Most recently, there have been 5 Mental Health Assessment Teams (MHAT) deployed into the Iraq theatre of operations armed with surveys that were distributed to currently deployed soldiers and Marines. The MHAT reports include robust findings about morale, specific deployment related issues and current stressors. These reports also include recommendations which are broken into sections: pre-deployment, deployment and post-deployment. In all 5 of the MHAT reports, the notion of assessing the soldiers' pre-deployment current levels of stress is conspicuously absent. Although the MHAT surveys do distinguish soldiers on the dimension of component (active duty vs. reservist) the pre-deployment stressors that are unique to guard and reserve soldiers are not addressed. Therefore, it is not known whether undetected pre-deployment issues that only guard and reservists must deal with could have confounded the outcomes of the MHAT surveys. However, one finding from the MHAT studies is particularly relevant to the current study. It revealed that deployment length and family separation were the top 2 non-combat stressors for both active duty and reserve component soldiers, which supports the early detection of higher than usual experienced stress regarding these issues. These numbers are also significantly higher for multiple deployers.

Eh, I did a crappy editing job, but you get the idea. It is still pretty loose with style, but relatively clear.

 

[73BARMYPgsp]

Eh, I did a crappy editing job, but you get the idea. It is still pretty loose with style, but relatively clear.

Those are right on. No matter how many times I read over it myself, I didn't even notice the missing dash between "post" and "deployment." I had the ", which supports the" line in there and I changed it to 2 sentences. I like it your way better. Maybe I should quit for the night.

 

[73BARMYPgsp]

I am curious though, what you mean by "loose" with style. I am not being defensive, but do you mean too conversational? I get that alot.

 

[JockNerd]

Building on T4C's....

Most recently, there have been five Mental Health Assessment Teams (MHAT) deployed into the Iraq theatre of operations armed with surveys that were distributed to currently deployed soldiers and Marines. Reports from the MHAT include robust findings about morale, specific deployment-related issues and current stressors. These reports also include recommendations that are broken into sections: pre-deployment, deployment and post-deployment. In all five of the MHAT reports, any assessment of the soldiers' current pre-deployment levels of stress is conspicuously absent. Although the MHAT surveys do distinguish soldiers on the dimension of component (active duty vs. reservist) the pre-deployment stressors that are unique to guard and reserve soldiers are not addressed. Therefore, it is not known whether undetected pre-deployment issues that only guard and reservists must deal with could have confounded the outcomes of the MHAT surveys. One finding from the MHAT studies, however, is particularly relevant to the current study: deployment length and family separation were the top two non-combat stressors for both active duty and reserve component soldiers. This finding supports the early detection of higher-than-usual experienced stress regarding these issues. Reported stress [I think; you had "these numbers," but it wasn't clear what that referred to] was also significantly higher for multiple deployers.


General comments:
-Omit needless words!
-The paragraph seems kind of meandering to me; I don't know at the beginning what the thrust is going to be, so I'm not really able to catch it when it comes (is your main point about the family stressors? Maybe it would be more clear in context of the entire paper).

I paid for undergrad by reviewing documents. I think if I weren't in grad school I would be quite blissful working in copy editing....

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

I am curious though, what you mean by "loose" with style. I am not being defensive, but do you mean too conversational? I get that alot.

I was heading off to bed or I would have explained it better, thankfully JN jumped in.

This is what I mean......

General comments:
-Omit needless words!
-The paragraph seems kind of meandering to me; I don't know at the beginning what the thrust is going to be, so I'm not really able to catch it when it comes (is your main point about the family stressors? Maybe it would be more clear in context of the entire paper).

I too did some professional writing and editing, and the 'voice' is a bit muddled. There is a difference between being really boring ("just the facts") and being concise. Americans tend to be wordy because we are more likely to write how we talk. Grad students would never graduate if they tore apart their documents like a writer (I'm not claiming to be a writer, they are far more florid in their work), but what I've found really helpful is to develop a 'voice' for different types of writing. If I read through my reports now, they all 'sound' the same....terminology, flow, etc. It is much easier to write and edit that way, since I settled on a writing style (I happen to love using commas at natural pauses.....which is common for speaker writers, as they use it for effect, and I also enjoy using semi-colons to join compound thoughts, as that helps cut down on run-on sentences.....which tend to be the death of wordy papers.)

My writing style on here is much more stream of thought, so grammatically it isn't that great, but it is just the style I developed so I can be understood, relatively easily.