Dec 31 2007
I was very very unhappy
Here is a short text describing how someone is feeling on a hot day. The narrator is an officer on a ship which has docked in a harbour:
My shirt was very very wet and sticky because I had sweated a lot. It wasn’t a shirt anymore. I felt pain in my feet because the deck plates, which were made of steel, were very very hot. I felt pain in my forehead because I was wearing white cap (which had a part at the front which stuck out above the eyes) and the leather band of the cap was pressing against my forehead more and more. It would remove skin of my forehead sooner or later. I felt pain in my eyes because of the sunlight which reflected from metal, water, and the harbour buildings, which were made white with a mixture of powdered chalk and water. I felt pain in my throat simply because I was thirsty. I was very very unhappy.
This is not a very well-written text, is it? There surely must be better ways of describing the situation and the ideas. Let’s see if we can improve it! Our task is twofold: First, spotting the two mistakes in the text, and second, rewriting the whole text in a “better’ way.
