Revising and Editing

 

Revising – taking a fresh look at a draft, making sure that it includes all the necessary information and that the presentation is clear and effective.

 

Editing – fine tuning prose, attending to details of grammar, usage, punctuation, and spelling.

 

REVISING

 

It’s best to finish the draft early and begin revising a day or two after you have finished the final draft.  This way, your mind is clear and fresh because you have gotten some distance from your writing.

 

Four Steps to Revision:

1)Rereading for meaning—at this point, you don’t want to worry about small details.  You want to concentrate more on your ideas and your message, your content, and your organization.

Things to be concerned with:

• Expansion of passages that need amplification (addition to or expansion of a point or an idea for clarification or proof). This includes any supporting details you may come up with that will help explain your point.

• Examples to help illustrate certain points.

• Organization to insure each paragraph contains a focused point and all information in the essay centers around a decisive controlling idea. Is there a logical structure to be followed? Are there topic sentences that state the main ideas of the paragraphs?

• Checking content for accuracy. Are names, dates, places, terms, etc correct? You will be surprised how often student do not check facts for accuracy. Do not let this happen to you.

• Making certain all ideas and statements are cohesive. Do you have transitional words and phrases to connect ideas together?

2)Remembering your Purpose—Make sure your draft has achieved its purpose.  Go back and read the essay prompt and make sure you have done everything you were asked to do. Where you supposed to critically analyze a particular topic? Where you asked to be descriptive? Writing prompts asks students to do a certain thing. Do not forget this. Go back and reconsider what you wanted to achieve in your writing.

 

3)Considering your audience—make sure you have addressed your audience and met their needs and expectations.  Have you caught their attention?  Have you defined any terms they may not know of?  And finally, is your language formal enough for them?

 

4)Getting Response—get response from friends, classmates, or tutors in the WC.  If you get someone else to evaluate your draft, make sure you include a copy of the essay prompt. This will be helpful for them in determining the desires of your audience.  Getting response from others also helps in determining clarity.

 

 

EDITING

After you have revised for ideas, you want to edit for grammar.  This is the last thing you do before turning in a draft. 

 

7 steps to editing:

1. Examine your sentences—make sure you have a variety of sentences. There are four sentence types in the English language, designated by clauses. A clause is a group of words, an idea. An Independent Clause is a complete idea. It can stand on its own and relies on nothing else for meaning. A Dependent Clause is the opposite. It cannot stand on its own and relies on another clause to provide meaning.

 

Four Sentence Types:

Simple (independent clause): Today, music represents much more than sex, drugs, and Rock N’ Roll.

 

Complex Sentence (independent clause with one or more dependent clauses): Though we went to the Homecoming Dance together, Jody and I are not going out steady.

 

Compound Sentence (two or more independent clauses connected with a conjunction): I have often considered what the perfect plot device for a story would be and I have come to the decision that the perfect plot device involves a man and his pet monkey.

 

Compound-Complex Sentence (two or more independent clauses connected with a conjunction and one or more dependent clauses): Though I have never visited there, I have always wanted to travel to Germany and I am convinced that Germany has everything to offer a traveler.

 

2. Varying sentence length—balance short and long sentences together.

 

3. Varying sentence openings—avoid redundancy. Make sure you are not beginning several sentences with the same word (I, she, he,)

 

A few possible solutions:

 

• Adverb or adverbial clause—Although the rules of the game have not changed much, basketball is a faster, rougher game than it was when Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain played.

• Prepositional phrase—Out of necessity, they stitched all of their secret fears and lingering nightmares into this existence.

• Participial phrase (generally modify nouns)—Looking north from the summit of Mount Pilatus, I observed a little town in the valley in the midst of holiday preparation.

• Appositives—A town of historic interest, Sante Fe also has many art galleries.

 

4. Checking for sentences opening with it and there—never begin with these words unless there’s no other way—these words are overly used. Similarly, avoid the verb “to be” in any form. Action verbs work much more effectively.

 

5. Examining words-check for word choice, make sure they are appropriate—this is the time to use a thesaurus in order to make your writing more formal. But be sure to check those words chosen in a dictionary to make sure they mean what you want them to mean depending upon the context of the sentence.

 

6. Using spell checker—but be aware that the spell checker does not check all mistakes (Ex. From vs. form)

 

7. Proofreading the final draft—go through the draft and read it OUT LOUD to yourself.  If you find yourself stuttering in some places, the chances are you have a problem with sentence structure or incorrect word usage.  These things often cannot be picked up in a silent reading.