What new things will computer-networked classrooms enable us to bo in professional writing courses?
Computerized classrooms offer opportunities to reconfigure the teaching of professional writing in several important areas: desktop publishing, editing, and electronic publishing. Of these areas, only editing can be taught effectively without the use of computers. Three articles discuss the use of computers for editing. Oliver reported on a study of students’ proof-reading in two media: paper and computer screens. His results show that students who had no experience editing on screen were markedly worse as proofreaders when using screens rather than paper text. With experience they were able to proofread at the same level as they achieved with paper. Computers, then, present a liability at first rather than an advantage. Rude and Smith reported on a survey of the ways professional technical editors used computers. They reported that computers increase the speed of editing, make it easy to implement major changes in documents, and automate some of the more tedious aspects of editing suc
