Photo by Johnny Phan ’16 – The Peer Editing Network (PEN) met in Mr. Damaso’s room at lunch, March 18. PEN provides constructive criticism and suggestions for pieces submitted to them by other students.

By Joseph Valencia ’17
THE ROUNDUP

The Peer Editing Network, also known as PEN, serves as a way for students to meet and improve their writing skills.

Mr. John Damaso ’97 established PEN. Three editors, David Mintz ’16, Krishna Murugan ’16 and Sohum Mendon ’16, are helping to manage the project.

The current editors intend to add more people as PEN grows.

PEN is a submission-based service that offers helpful editing for students who wish to improve their writing and organizational skills. PEN will have a collective email that all students can use to submit work.

PEN is still in development, and is not active and ready for students to use yet.

“PEN is still in its developmental stage, so it is probable that many changes will occur before it is implemented into the Brophy community,” Mintz said.

A student submitting a document must include their year, English class and teacher. They must also include the essay prompt and specifications for the editing help they are to receive.

Essays are put into an Google Drive Spreadsheet, where editors can select an essay to critique. The essays are then returned to the owner with critiques that are tailored to the owner’s teacher, class and specifications.

“I think that, through word of mouth and the Daily Bulletin, the PEN will get out enough,” Mendon said.

The current editors are planning groups and editor divisions for the future of PEN. The goal of PEN is to gather editors from various classes from the wide array of English classes offered at Brophy.

For example, a freshman editor who is currently a member of PEN will usually not review a paper submitted by a senior student, as the lack of experience and understanding could be detrimental to the editing process.

“I am not going to bar freshmen permanently from viewing senior papers though,”  Mendon said. “I think it would be unfair to invalidate the writing skills of anyone in the Brophy community based on age.”

The current leaders of PEN are also planning on creating criteria based groups.

“We can easily give groups who are part of the ‘Grammar Committee’ any papers relating to grammar,” Mendon said.

The critiques provided by the editor don’t actually change the paper, they only provide suggestions to improve the quality of the essay.

The editors are also currently working on a system of time parameters for editing.

The more editing an essay needs, the more time must be provided for the editors to work on the paper.