short passage for correction.

One day, Mrs Tan, her daughter Sally, Mr Lau, and an elderly woman were waiting for the lift to come. When the door of the lift opened, they went in, and Sally pressed the number of the floor she was living on. SHE also pressed the floor numbers for the other passengers.

On reaching the third floor, the lift suddenly stopped moving. Mrs Tan, her daughter and the old woman were very scared, but Mr Lau told them to remain calm and not panic. He pressed the emergency bell REPEATEDLY. About fifteen minutes later, two technicians arrived. One of them said in a reassuring voice, “Remain calm. The lift will be opened soon."

A few minutes late, the lift door opened. Mrs Tan and her daughter thanked the technicians. The other passengers also thanked them. After that, they walked to their flats, relieved that their ordeal was over.



Several of the changes are very small--I don't think the original was proofread very throughly. I know you prefer English English to American English, but keep in mind that in America waiting for a lift generally means you're expecting someone to come along in a car and give you a ride--took me a bit to figure out what you were talking about, and "lift" appeared much too often in the original.

We also generally put periods after Mr. and Mrs. They look naked without them.

The periods are full stops "Mr"and "Mrs" are abreviations so require them

This writing has many of the same problems as the earlier one about the picnic at the beach. Review notes from that one.

Abbreviations such as Mr and Mrs require a period. Mr. = Mister/Mrs. = Misses.

This repetitive error has been explained repeatedly in your other writings. It is now up to you/your son to correct this. I will no longer do so.

Here is my revised version. Compare this to yours to see what was changed. Since many of the problems with this writing are explained in the corrections for the beach picnic story, I would be interested in reading some feedback from you as to why you think certain phrasing was reworded or omitted entirely in the revision. This will help reinforce your understanding of English if you can analyze and explain what was wrong about the original writing and why it was corrected in this manner in the revision. If you don't understand why something was changed, ask and I'll explain.

Revised:

Hi Butrflynet

My words are in brackets and my comments, as requested, are numbered and commented below the composition. Please let me know if my comments are wrong. Thanks in advance.

One day Mrs. Tan, her daughter Sally, Mr. Lau, and an elderly woman were waiting for the lift to come. When the door(1. of the lift) opened, they entered (2. they went into the lift) and Sally pressed the floor number (pressed the lift number of the floor she was living on) she was living on and then pressed the floor numbers for the other passengers. The lift suddenly stopped moving when it reached the third floor. (3. On reaching the third floor, the lift suddenly stopped moving.) Mr. Lau reassured the frightened females (4. Mrs Tan, her daughter and the old woman) as he pressed the emergency bell button. Two technicians arrived about fifteen minutes later and asked them to remain calm, saying the lift would open soon. A few minutes later, the door opened and the lift passengers (5. Mrs Tan and her daughter thanked the technicians. The other passengers also thanked them. After that, they walked to their flats, relieved that ... ) thanked the technicians as they exited the lift and walked the rest of the way to their flats.

1. of the lift - redundant
2. went into the lift - repetition of 'lift'; 'entered' substitutes for the clause to achieve brevity.
3. Your version is more natural.
4.' females' as corrected by you avoids repetition of Mrs Tan ... thanked them.
5. My version is too wordy. Your version removes the wordiness.

Thanks, Monterey, for correcting my passage.

You're right. There are a couple of typos in the passage. Sorry about that as I was tired as I was typing the passage. In future, I will not post when I'm tired.

Best wishes.

Hi Butrflynet

I was unable to comment on the following sentence which I earlier missed out in my earlier post as the time allocated for editing was over.

Sally pressed the floor number (pressed the lift number of the floor she was living on) she was living on.

'Lift number' refers to the number of the lift, so it should be floor number as corrected by you. Thanks for pointing out the error.

Great! You got it. Try applying a similar analysis to your next writing. While editing, ask yourself if there is too much repetition of certain words. Hunt for redundancy and unnecessary statement of the obvious. Check your construction of complex sentences. Is repetitive use of the conjunction "and" easily replaced with a comma?

You did great! I expect to see great improvement now that you've shown you understand why the revisions were made and that you can do a proper analysis of your writing.

Don't forget about needing a period when using the abbreviations Mr. or Mrs. It is a dead giveaway that a novice is the author.

When you feel comfortable with it, a good writing exercise to challenge your skill is to write a couple paragraphs on a subject without repeating any of the words. If your paragraph contains 100 words, they should be 100 unique words; nothing repeated. This will stretch your vocabulary and sentence construction skils.

(Well, it's probably all right if you repeat words like "the" or "a" or "in" or "is" or "it"in fact it would probably be difficult to write 100 words without at least one of such words being repeated, but in general butrfly's idea is good).

And "females" is generally a worse choice than "women" or possibly "ladies" (tho "ladies" is often sort of a fuddy-duddy word)(and it is just a tad sexist for the guy to be calm and reassuring and self-possessed while the women are scared--a little more gender neutrality might be better next time around).

Thanks, Butrflynet and Monterey Jack, for your help.

I found a website that may be helpful to you:

http://www.wikihow.com/Category:English

Many thanks, Butrflynet, for the website.

Mrs. is short for "Mistress".