Revising and Editing
When you revise something that you wrote, you ask yourself "big picture" questions: issues at the essay and paragraph level:
- Did I address all parts of the assignment?
- Did I address all parts in enough depth? Where do I need to add more information?
- Did I provide convincing reasons, examples, explanations? Do any need to be added, changed, or deleted?
- Did I make my points in some logical order (general to specific/specific to general/ earliest to latest/ least important to most important/ most important to least important)? Do any sections need to be moved around?
- Do my OPENING AND CLOSING PARAGRAPHS play the same tune?
When you edit, you ask yourself questions about clarity, style, and correctness: issues at the sentence and word level:
- Can I make my point in FEWER words?
- Can I make my point better with DIFFERENT words?
- Have I VARIED the length and structure of my sentences, so that they are not all short (or all long) and do not all start with the same word.
- Did I keep RELATED parts of the sentence together, expressing similar ideas in similar structures?
- Does my writing sound FORMAL enough for its task but not overly formal?
- Have I checked my use of 1st person (I/me), 2nd person (you/your) and 3rd person (he/she/it/they) PRONOUNS and used them appropriately for the situation?
- Have I checked my writing carefully for the kind of GRAMMAR mistakes I typically make and corrected all of them?