Strategies, Hints, and Tips for Revising and Editing Essays

Revision can seem like a daunting task. After all, how can a student be expected to find, understand, and correct a paper's errors when that student made the errors in the first place? It's understandably frustrating. However, there are some strategies for revision that can help make it a bit more manageable. 

The most important things to remember about revision are that revision is not the same as editing, neither revision nor editing should be a solo activity, and each pass at the paper improves the paper. It may not be "perfect" after revisions have been made, but it will be "better." 

But first things first, it's important to understand what's meant by revision. Revision often includes two different "mini-steps" in the writing process, both revision and editing. Whereas revision implies looking at the structural integrity of an essay, editing implies correcting errors at the sentence-level. 

Revision 

During revision, both self revision and peer revision, students look at the overall structure and content of an essay to make sure it has unity, coherence, and clearly articulated evidence that provides just the right amount of ethos and logos, and sometimes pathos, for the intended audience. There are several strategies for making the revision process effective and efficient.

Revision Hints and Tips for Students

• Read and revise multiple times, focusing on different aspects of the paper each time. 
• Take breaks between different aspects to clear your mind.
• Ask someone to read the paper aloud as you listen and make notes about anything that's unclear to your reader. 
• Discuss the paper with others both before and after peer revision to make sure you've cleared up any inconsistencies and carefully supported all your points.
• Outline your paper once it's finished to check its structure, and rearrange it as necessary.
• Make an appointment with a tutor if you aren't sure how to restructure or format your paper.

Editing

When editing, students look for and correct errors in grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. Those errors might be as innocuous as spelling "teh" instead of "the" or forgetting the hyphen in a compound word. On the other hand, these types of errors can be as serious as missing quotation marks to set apart a direct quotation.  That kind of error can result in unintentional plagiarism and a failing grade.

Editing Hints and Tips for Students

• Read and revise multiple times, looking for different types of mistakes each time.
• Reverse-reading, or reading the last sentence to the first, is especially helpful when looking for common errors, including sentence fragments, missing antecedents, or vague language. 
• Use your word processing program's built-in checkers, or apps like Grammarly and Hemmingway Writer, to help you locate potential mistakes. Use your best judgement when implementing suggestions.
• Check each piece of source content and each citation using a publication manual or the OWL Purdue Web site.
• Read aloud to listen for additional errors commonly made, like wordiness, subject-verb agreement errors, and errors with modifiers.
• Make an appointment with a tutor if you aren't sure how to edit your errors.

Revision and Editing Checklists

One way to divide revision and editing into manageable pieces is to use a checklist based on the paper's rhetorical situation and the main qualities of writing: unity, coherence, clarity, content, and formatting.

Purpose

• Is the purpose or mode and strategy of this essay easy to identify just by reading the introduction?
• Does the writer maintain one purpose or mode and strategy for the entire essay?

Focus

• Is this an appropriate narrowed topic for the required mode of this essay?
• Is the essay’s title and subtitle based on the thesis statement’s topic and tone?
• Does the title explain the specific focus of the essay?
• Is the thesis focused on one main idea?
• Can the thesis easily be found in either the introduction or conclusion of the essay?

Intended Audience

• Who is the intended audience?
• Is the intended audience easy to identify just by reading the introduction?
• Does this essay offer the intended reader a chance to think and learn?
• Is the writer’s voice, style, tone, and level of formality effective for the intended audience?

Unity

• Does the attention-getting material in the introduction appropriately lead-into the thesis?
• Does each paragraph have one clear topic sentence?
• Does each topic sentence stem from one main idea expressed in the thesis or essay map?
• Does the evidence in each paragraph directly support that paragraph’s topic sentence?
• Are there any shifts in the language or style that might distract or confuse the intended audience?
• Does the writer inadvertently stray from the thesis or shift their viewpoint at any point in the essay?
• Does the conclusion end the essay in a way that helps the reader remember the thesis statement?

Coherence

• Do the paragraphs in the essay flow smoothly from one to another?
• Are the paragraphs ordered logically and deliberately?
• Do the sentences in each paragraph flow smoothly from one to another?
• Is each new piece of evidence introduced and presented smoothly using transitional words and phrases?
• Has the writer used attribution to introduce the credentials of source content authors?

Clarity

• Has the writer avoided vague and ambiguous language, like “very” or “you?”
• Have you found any extraneous language or wordiness?
• Have you found any sentence fragments or run-on sentences?
• Have you found any subject-verb or pronoun agreement errors?
• Have you found any punctuation or capitalization errors?

Content

• Has the writer demonstrated an appropriate use of ethos?
• Has the writer demonstrated an appropriate use of pathos?
• Has the writer demonstrated an appropriate use of logos?
• Does this essay contain enough evidence to support each topic sentence?
• Has the student used expert or lay testimony and facts or statistics as evidence?
• Has the student used a narrative, description, or personal experience as evidence?
• Has the student provided real and hypothetical examples?
• Most importantly, are all claims supported by reasons and evidence?

Formatting

• Does this essay meet the word count and research requirements of the assignment?
• Is all source content cited both in-text and on the references page in MLA or APA format?
• Are this essay’s title page, running head, body, and citations in MLA or APA format?

 

Again, please remember that revision and editing are not the same processes and should be attempted separately, at different times, so that writers and reviewers can focus on specific error types without feeling overwhelmed. It's also important that students work with one another and with tutors, if necessary, to facilitate both revision and editing. Although many of the steps in the writing process are often an individual writer's responsibility, a paper will be in it's best form after others have helped a writer find and correct errors in unity, coherence, clarity, content, and formatting.

Want to read more about writing essays? Try

An Overview of the Writing Process

Prewriting the Research Essay: Starting with "I Think"

Myths about Writing Essays

Copyright Amy Lynn Hess. Contact the author for permission to republish.