Revising with Williams

Academic course load is the number of hours that a student carries in a semester or session. In the fall and winter semesters, the recommended full-time course load is 12-16 hours (15 with student teaching). In the seven and one-half week spring and summer sessions, it is six to eight hours, and in the six-week spring and summer sessions, it is six hours. Fall and winter students must register for a minimum of 12 credit hours to qualify as full time for University purposes, including financial aid. For the spring and summer semesters, the minimum full-time load is six credit hours for financial aid or other purposes.

The number of credit hours that a student carries in a semester or session is his academic course load. For University purposes, including financial aid, a student must register for a minimum of 12 credit hours in the fall or winter to qualify as full-time . The minimum full-time load is 6 hours in the spring and summer. In the fall and winter semesters, we recommend a full-time course load of 12-16 hours (15 with student teaching). In the seven-and-one-half-week spring and summer sessions, full-time course load is 6-8 hours. In the six-week spring and summer sessions, full-time is 6 hours.



As Williams recommends in Chapter 2: Clarity, I wanted to highlight subjects and characters here. I tried to bring out the student (who will be directly using the information) and the University as the two main characters. The University did a good job hiding itself in this paragraph, so "recommended" became "we recommend." (And I got a de-nominalized verb to boot.)

This paragraph also lacked cohesion, so I tried to emphasize topic strings: hours, course load--> hours, full-time--> full-time, spring/summer--> fall/winter, hours--> particular semester, hours. Because this information is extremely important to new students, I wanted to begin simply, with old information, and slowly introduce new information. Therefore, I rearranged the paragraph to make it begin with the familiar concept of "hours." I then built up from this familiar information to deal with the ideas "full-time" and "full-time in different semesters." Also, where the third and fourth sentences meet, a nice rhythm appeared after revision: "...spring and summer. In the fall and winter..." Ideally, this evocation of the natural revolution of the seasons will give students a moment of peace and clarity in the face of the confusing wasteland of University regulations.

Finally, although not related to Williams, I tried to make punctuation and numerals consistent. Instead of "12-16 hours" and "six to eight hours," I standardized them to make "12-16 hours" and "6-8 hours." Punctuation also would vary from "full-time" to "full time." I chose to use the form "full-time" (apparently the more progressive form according to Strunk and White).