Revising with Williams

Original Text
At the end of every fall and winter semester, hundreds of students from English 121 classes display their written work at the semi-annual Celebration of Student Writing. For the celebration, sponsored by the Department of English Language and Literature and the Office of Undergraduate Studies, students create products representing the research they do in their 121 classes. Students who display their work are joined at the celebration by EMU faculty and administrators, students from other EMU courses and visitors ranging from prospective EMU students to students in writing courses from other colleges. Attendees wander the room and talk with student authors about their celebration projects and their research work for the semester.

Process of change
In chapter three Williams stated that "readers need familiar information at the beginnings of sentences. This led to my use of sequence beginning in the first sentence. In the second sentence, the sentence is structured in such a way that it obscures the student's role in the celebration. The purpose of the celebration isn't reached until the end of the sentence, and this had to be sorted out in my head. In the revision the students are the subject of the verb, and who the celebration is sponsored by is clearly stated in a separate sentence. Both sentences end up being arranged in chronological sequence. This ensures that the topic string is being woven through the paragraph properly. The word products should be projects to adhere with the context of the sentence. With this same sentence, the context calls not for the present tense of they do, but the past tense. The context has shown us that the event takes place at the end of the semester, therefore the research has already been done. This adheres to our sense of coherence. The secret to a readable sentence is in the first five or six words. In the sentence beginning with 'attendees wander the room', this word choice for doesn't create for the reader a consistent point of view. "Wander", figuratively and literally leads us astray. Williams states in chapter five the second the second kind of string, the thematic string. The set of conceptually related words in the revision are in bold.

Revision
At the semi-annual Celebration of Student Writing, hundreds of English 121 students display their written work the end of every fall and winter semester. The celebration is sponsored by the Department of English Language and Literature and the Office of Undergraduate studies. Students create projects representing the research they have done in their 121 classes. Students who display their work are joined at the celebration by EMU faculty and administrators, students from other EMU courses, and visitors ranging from prospective EMU students to students in writing courses at other colleges. Attendees talk with student authors about their celebration projects and research work for the semester.