Even after a draft is written, you are still not quite finished. The fourth step of the process is revising and the fifth step is editing. Revising and editing are not the same thing, and it is best to accomplish revision and editing as two separate, distinct steps.
When you revise, you are evaluating and improving, if necessary, the way your whole essay or individual paragraphs are organized or developed. You will need to consider completeness, cohesiveness, and coherence when revising your work.
When you edit your writing, you proofread, or search for errors at the sentence and word levels. In other words, you comb through the paper carefully, searching for grammatical and spelling errors and making adjustments to sentences to improve your overall style. Editing involves making these necessary corrections. After locating and fixing any errors, you prepare your final draft for submission.
Revising vs. Editing
Take a moment and think about the word revision. Notice that it includes the prefix re-, meaning “back or again,” and the root word –vision, which means revision literally means “to look at again.” Once you have written an essay, you need to look at it again to make sure you have successfully explained your main idea to your readers.
Revising and editing are different steps. When you revise a paragraph, you are looking for and then correcting paragraph-level problems. In other words, you are evaluating and improving, if necessary, the way your whole paragraph is organized or developed. Editing involves examining the paragraph at the sentence and word levels and correcting errors in sentence construction, grammar, word choice, and spelling.
It is best to accomplish revision and editing as two separate, distinct steps, for each process involves looking at different aspects of each paragraph.
Criteria for Revision
To revise a paragraph, you will need to evaluate it for the three Cs: completeness, cohesiveness, and coherence.
- Completeness. When you are examining a paragraph to make sure it is complete, or adequately developed, you are evaluating its layers of development. A layer of development provides more specific information about a general idea in the sentence that came before it. It anticipates and answers readers’ questions about more general statements, so it increases their understanding. To determine whether you have provided enough development, consider the following techniques.
- Use different colors of highlighter markers to identify the layers in your paragraph. Use one color to highlight the topic sentence, which is the most general sentence in the paragraph. Use another color to highlight the second sentence, which should develop the first sentence. If the third sentence develops the second sentence, use yet another color to highlight it. If the third sentence develops the first sentence, highlight it with the same color you used for the second sentence. Follow this same procedure for all sentences in the paragraph. Then, after you have highlighted every sentence, see how colorful your paragraph is. In general, paragraphs that contain more colors are probably developing the main idea with sufficient details. A paragraph that is highlighted with only two colors, however, may need the addition of more specific information and examples.
- Count the sentences in your paragraphs. There is no magic minimum or maximum number of sentences for a paragraph. The number of sentences a paragraph contains will depend on the main idea and supporting information. However, if a paragraph contains only three or four sentences, it may be incomplete because it is not adequately developed. Get in the habit of scrutinizing shorter paragraphs in particular to make sure that they include enough layers of development.
- Scan your drafts for the phrase for example. This phrase often appears at the beginning of sentences that really help readers grasp your ideas. If you never begin sentences this way, you may not be including the specific information your reader needs in order to understand your thoughts on a topic.
- Cohesiveness. After you determine that your paragraph includes enough layers of development, the next step is to make sure that every sentence in it relates to the idea in your topic sentence. If a paragraph is cohesive, all of its sentences “stick together” to support one main idea. To determine whether you have included a sentence that prevents cohesiveness, try these two techniques:
- Count the sentences in your paragraph. When you evaluate a paragraph for completeness, you become more aware of which ones are particularly brief. When you evaluate for cohesiveness, you pay more attention to especially long paragraphs. A relatively long paragraph might be trying to develop too many different ideas, so it may not be cohesive. It may need to be divided up into smaller, more unified units.
- Read the sentences of your paragraph backward, beginning with the last sentence. After you read each sentence, reread the topic sentence. Decide whether each individual sentence truly relates to the main idea.
- Coherence. In addition to being complete and cohesive, a paragraph needs to be coherent. If a paragraph is coherent, it makes sense because it offers a clear progression of thought. In other words, readers can easily follow the writer’s ideas from sentence to sentence. Evaluating a paragraph’s coherence involves examining its overall organization and its transitions, as well as repetition of key words and ideas. Specifically, you should review the following areas:
- Organization and transitions. The ideas in paragraphs are often presented in certain types of order that are familiar to readers. For example, paragraphs that relate a series of events or explain the steps in a process are organized in time order. In other words, the events or steps are presented in chronological order, or the order in which they happened. A second common type is order of importance. Using this order, a series of ideas or reasons may be presented either the most important item either given first or saved until last.
- Repetition of key words and ideas. Another feature of coherent paragraphs is the repetition of key words and ideas, which link the sentences of the paragraph together. Repeating the words that name the topic, along with synonyms and pronouns that either rename or refer to the topic, causes the whole paragraph to “stick together.”
Criteria for Proofreading and Editing
During the editing step, you will improve the essay’s style and correct major sentence errors, as well errors in grammar, mechanics, and spelling.
- Style. The style of writing refers to the words the writer has chosen and the way sentences are constructed. There are many different writing styles, and you will surely develop your own style as you continue to improve your overall writing skills. Right now, however, you should concentrate on choosing words and constructing sentences in such a way that your writing is interesting, clear, and easy to read.
- Sentence length: Writing that is composed mostly of very short sentences usually seems dull and monotonous to readers. If readers are bored by your sentences, they will find it harder to concentrate on your meaning. Also, short sentences may not make important connections, so readers may not fully understand your ideas.
- Sentence types: Another way to achieve a style of writing that is interesting is to vary not only the length but also the type of sentence you write. If you see that you are relying too heavily on simple, short sentences, combine some of them to add more variety. There are four types of sentences:
- A simple sentence contains just one independent clause (one subject– verb relationship). The cashier counted the money in the drawer.
- A compound sentence contains two independent clauses. Each contains at least one subject and one verb and could stand alone as a complete sentence. My aunt likes cats, but my uncle is allergic to them.
- A complex sentence contains a dependent clause and an independent clause. If I am going to make an A on the exam, I will have to study.
- A compound–complex sentence includes a dependent clause and two independent clauses. As the final buzzer sounded, Mike shot the ball, and it went into the
- Diction: Diction refers to the individual words you choose. These words affect your style. In particular, you should evaluate:
- the appropriateness of your words’ level of formality, specificity, emotion, and originality. To determine whether a word is appropriate or not, you must consider your readers and decide if the word is suitable for them.
- whether your words are specific enough. Specific words help readers form clear images in their minds so that they can grasp your meaning more easily. Using general or more vague terms makes it harder for readers to understand your ideas.
- the emotion conveyed through the words you have chosen. Some words, like cat, are relatively neutral. That is, they carry no particular emotional suggestion. But compare cat with the word kitty, which indicates affection for that animal.
- whether your word choices are original. In other words, you should find and eliminate any clichés, or overused expressions that everyone has heard before.
- Major sentence errors. In addition to proofreading your drafts for sentence variety, appropriate language, and wordiness, you will need to find and eliminate major errors in sentence structure. These errors include sentence fragments, run-on sentences, dangling or misplaced modifiers, and faulty parallelism.
- Grammar and mechanics. You will also need to check your writing for many other kinds of grammatical and mechanical errors, including subject-verb agreement errors, errors in verb tense, and capitalization and punctuation errors.
- Spelling. Your final draft should always be free of spelling errors. There are three ways to identify and correct errors in spelling. First, whenever you have the slightest doubt whether a word is spelled correctly, look it up in a dictionary. Second, you can use spell- checking software. Finally, you can ask someone else to proofread your draft for spelling errors.
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Content adapted from the open course open course titled “Open Now Developmental English” authored by Cengage Learning, licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.