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Offcut

Craft Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An offcut is a removed piece of language that remains valuable after being cut from a poem.

Detailed Definition
An offcut may be a deleted line, image, title, stanza, or alternate ending stored for later use. Cutting does not necessarily prove that the material was weak; it may simply belong to another poem or have arrived before its proper context. Keeping offcuts can protect revision from anxiety about loss, while reviewing them later may reveal recurring obsessions. The poet should resist forcing them back into the original draft, since their usefulness often depends on the freedom created by removal.
Example
Example in poetry:
An offcut is a discarded fragment that can become a poem’s useful final image, as when a rejected line supplies the closing metaphor; A poet may place an offcut from an earlier draft in the margin as a brief epigraph; A collage poem can deliberately assemble offcuts of overheard speech, notes, and abandoned descriptions; The phrase “small scraps of weather” could be an offcut preserved from a longer poem and later given a new context
Additional Notes
An offcut is language removed during revision but preserved because it may serve a later poem, title, epigraph, or alternate version. Saving offcuts helps poets revise boldly without treating every deletion as waste. An offcut can also reveal a competing image, voice, or argument that clarifies what the finished poem chooses to exclude. Related practices include drafting, excision, compression, and archival revision.
Also Known As
Scrap Remnant
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