Editing Examples
Here are two paragraphs, before and after copyediting. These are rather
extreme examples; most text does not require this much editing.
¶1 (before editing)
One might attempt to fall back on “the law of comparative advantages”
in explaining the Japanese rise in the auto industry. One alleged fact
disturbs that theory since it has been suggested that Japanese auto plants in
the United States are nearly as efficient as those in Japan. The strength of
this book, a rigorous econometrics application of a general cost function
yields results which when analyzed with the data trends of the 1980s are
consistent with the management hypothesis—that differences in management
techniques and the effectiveness of management explains relative performance
between Japanese and North American auto producers.
¶1 (after editing)
One might invoke the “law of comparative advantage” to explain the
Japanese rise in the auto industry, despite the suggestion by some that
Japanese auto plants in the United States are nearly as efficient as those in
Japan. This book, a rigorous econometrics application of a general cost
function, yields results that—when analyzed with the data trends of the
1980s—are consistent with the management hypothesis: Differences in
management techniques and effectiveness account for the superior performance
of Japanese versus North American auto producers.
¶2 (before editing)
Given this, one can consider public goods economies (in this case the
sets of alternatives over which individual and social preferences are defined
are identical) or/and private-goods economies (in the Arrow-Debreu framework,
individual preferences are defined over a subset of the Euclidean space of,
say, k dimensions if there are k goods, and the normative concept,
Pareto-optimality, is defined over the n-fold cartesian product of the former
space if there are n individuals—note that what seems interesting is to
choose the “best” Walras allocations, i.e., the aggregation function must
give rise to a set of best equilibrium allocations, then going further than
the classical new welfare economics theorems: in this sense … allocations
could be selected).
¶2 (after editing)
For public-goods economies, the sets of alternatives over which
individual and social preferences are defined are identical. In the
Arrow–Debreu framework, individual preferences in private-goods economies
are defined over a subset of the Euclidean space of (say) k dimensions if
there are k goods, whereas the normative concept of Pareto optimality is
defined over the n-fold Cartesian product of Euclidean space if there are n
individuals. (Note that we are interested in choosing the “best” Walras
allocations; i.e., the aggregation function must give rise to a set of best
equilibrium allocations and so goes beyond the theorems of classical welfare
economics. In this sense, … allocations could be selected.)
