revise an essay

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Steps for Revising Your Paper

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Proofreading is primarily about searching your writing for errors, both grammatical and typographical, before submitting your paper for an audience (a teacher, a publisher, etc.). Use this resource to help you find and fix common errors.

When you have plenty of time to revise, use the time to work on your paper and to take breaks from writing. If you can forget about your draft for a day or two, you may return to it with a fresh outlook. During the revising process, put your writing aside at least twice—once during the first part of the process, when you are reorganizing your work, and once during the second part, when you are polishing and paying attention to details.

Use the following questions to evaluate your drafts. You can use your responses to revise your papers by reorganizing them to make your best points stand out, by adding needed information, by eliminating irrelevant information, and by clarifying sections or sentences.

Find your main point.

What are you trying to say in the paper? In other words, try to summarize your thesis, or main point, and the evidence you are using to support that point. Try to imagine that this paper belongs to someone else. Does the paper have a clear thesis? Do you know what the paper is going to be about?

Identify your readers and your purpose.

What are you trying to do in the paper? In other words, are you trying to argue with the reading, to analyze the reading, to evaluate the reading, to apply the reading to another situation, or to accomplish another goal?

Evaluate your evidence.

Does the body of your paper support your thesis? Do you offer enough evidence to support your claim? If you are using quotations from the text as evidence, did you cite them properly?

Save only the good pieces.

Do all of the ideas relate back to the thesis? Is there anything that doesn't seem to fit? If so, you either need to change your thesis to reflect the idea or cut the idea.

Tighten and clean up your language.

Do all of the ideas in the paper make sense? Are there unclear or confusing ideas or sentences? Read your paper out loud and listen for awkward pauses and unclear ideas. Cut out extra words, vagueness, and misused words.

Visit the Purdue OWL's vidcast on cutting during the revision phase for more help with this task.

Eliminate mistakes in grammar and usage.

Do you see any problems with grammar, punctuation, or spelling? If you think something is wrong, you should make a note of it, even if you don't know how to fix it. You can always talk to a Writing Lab tutor about how to correct errors.

Switch from writer-centered to reader-centered.

Try to detach yourself from what you've written; pretend that you are reviewing someone else's work. What would you say is the most successful part of your paper? Why? How could this part be made even better? What would you say is the least successful part of your paper? Why? How could this part be improved?

Revising Drafts

Rewriting is the essence of writing well—where the game is won or lost. —William Zinsser

What this handout is about

This handout will motivate you to revise your drafts and give you strategies to revise effectively.

What does it mean to revise?

Revision literally means to “see again,” to look at something from a fresh, critical perspective. It is an ongoing process of rethinking the paper: reconsidering your arguments, reviewing your evidence, refining your purpose, reorganizing your presentation, reviving stale prose.

But I thought revision was just fixing the commas and spelling

Nope. That’s called proofreading. It’s an important step before turning your paper in, but if your ideas are predictable, your thesis is weak, and your organization is a mess, then proofreading will just be putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. When you finish revising, that’s the time to proofread. For more information on the subject, see our handout on proofreading .

How about if I just reword things: look for better words, avoid repetition, etc.? Is that revision?

Well, that’s a part of revision called editing. It’s another important final step in polishing your work. But if you haven’t thought through your ideas, then rephrasing them won’t make any difference.

Why is revision important?

Writing is a process of discovery, and you don’t always produce your best stuff when you first get started. So revision is a chance for you to look critically at what you have written to see:

• if it’s really worth saying,
• if it says what you wanted to say, and
• if a reader will understand what you’re saying.

The process

What steps should i use when i begin to revise.

Here are several things to do. But don’t try them all at one time. Instead, focus on two or three main areas during each revision session:

• Wait awhile after you’ve finished a draft before looking at it again. The Roman poet Horace thought one should wait nine years, but that’s a bit much. A day—a few hours even—will work. When you do return to the draft, be honest with yourself, and don’t be lazy. Ask yourself what you really think about the paper.
• As The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers puts it, “THINK BIG, don’t tinker” (61). At this stage, you should be concerned with the large issues in the paper, not the commas.
• Check the focus of the paper: Is it appropriate to the assignment? Is the topic too big or too narrow? Do you stay on track through the entire paper?
• Think honestly about your thesis: Do you still agree with it? Should it be modified in light of something you discovered as you wrote the paper? Does it make a sophisticated, provocative point, or does it just say what anyone could say if given the same topic? Does your thesis generalize instead of taking a specific position? Should it be changed altogether? For more information visit our handout on thesis statements .
• Think about your purpose in writing: Does your introduction state clearly what you intend to do? Will your aims be clear to your readers?

What are some other steps I should consider in later stages of the revision process?

• Examine the balance within your paper: Are some parts out of proportion with others? Do you spend too much time on one trivial point and neglect a more important point? Do you give lots of detail early on and then let your points get thinner by the end?
• Check that you have kept your promises to your readers: Does your paper follow through on what the thesis promises? Do you support all the claims in your thesis? Are the tone and formality of the language appropriate for your audience?
• Check the organization: Does your paper follow a pattern that makes sense? Do the transitions move your readers smoothly from one point to the next? Do the topic sentences of each paragraph appropriately introduce what that paragraph is about? Would your paper work better if you moved some things around? For more information visit our handout on reorganizing drafts.
• Check your information: Are all your facts accurate? Are any of your statements misleading? Have you provided enough detail to satisfy readers’ curiosity? Have you cited all your information appropriately?
• Check your conclusion: Does the last paragraph tie the paper together smoothly and end on a stimulating note, or does the paper just die a slow, redundant, lame, or abrupt death?

Whoa! I thought I could just revise in a few minutes

Sorry. You may want to start working on your next paper early so that you have plenty of time for revising. That way you can give yourself some time to come back to look at what you’ve written with a fresh pair of eyes. It’s amazing how something that sounded brilliant the moment you wrote it can prove to be less-than-brilliant when you give it a chance to incubate.

But I don’t want to rewrite my whole paper!

Revision doesn’t necessarily mean rewriting the whole paper. Sometimes it means revising the thesis to match what you’ve discovered while writing. Sometimes it means coming up with stronger arguments to defend your position, or coming up with more vivid examples to illustrate your points. Sometimes it means shifting the order of your paper to help the reader follow your argument, or to change the emphasis of your points. Sometimes it means adding or deleting material for balance or emphasis. And then, sadly, sometimes revision does mean trashing your first draft and starting from scratch. Better that than having the teacher trash your final paper.

But I work so hard on what I write that I can’t afford to throw any of it away

If you want to be a polished writer, then you will eventually find out that you can’t afford NOT to throw stuff away. As writers, we often produce lots of material that needs to be tossed. The idea or metaphor or paragraph that I think is most wonderful and brilliant is often the very thing that confuses my reader or ruins the tone of my piece or interrupts the flow of my argument.Writers must be willing to sacrifice their favorite bits of writing for the good of the piece as a whole. In order to trim things down, though, you first have to have plenty of material on the page. One trick is not to hinder yourself while you are composing the first draft because the more you produce, the more you will have to work with when cutting time comes.

But sometimes I revise as I go

That’s OK. Since writing is a circular process, you don’t do everything in some specific order. Sometimes you write something and then tinker with it before moving on. But be warned: there are two potential problems with revising as you go. One is that if you revise only as you go along, you never get to think of the big picture. The key is still to give yourself enough time to look at the essay as a whole once you’ve finished. Another danger to revising as you go is that you may short-circuit your creativity. If you spend too much time tinkering with what is on the page, you may lose some of what hasn’t yet made it to the page. Here’s a tip: Don’t proofread as you go. You may waste time correcting the commas in a sentence that may end up being cut anyway.

How do I go about the process of revising? Any tips?

• Work from a printed copy; it’s easier on the eyes. Also, problems that seem invisible on the screen somehow tend to show up better on paper.
• Another tip is to read the paper out loud. That’s one way to see how well things flow.
• Remember all those questions listed above? Don’t try to tackle all of them in one draft. Pick a few “agendas” for each draft so that you won’t go mad trying to see, all at once, if you’ve done everything.
• Ask lots of questions and don’t flinch from answering them truthfully. For example, ask if there are opposing viewpoints that you haven’t considered yet.

Whenever I revise, I just make things worse. I do my best work without revising

That’s a common misconception that sometimes arises from fear, sometimes from laziness. The truth is, though, that except for those rare moments of inspiration or genius when the perfect ideas expressed in the perfect words in the perfect order flow gracefully and effortlessly from the mind, all experienced writers revise their work. I wrote six drafts of this handout. Hemingway rewrote the last page of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times. If you’re still not convinced, re-read some of your old papers. How do they sound now? What would you revise if you had a chance?

What can get in the way of good revision strategies?

Don’t fall in love with what you have written. If you do, you will be hesitant to change it even if you know it’s not great. Start out with a working thesis, and don’t act like you’re married to it. Instead, act like you’re dating it, seeing if you’re compatible, finding out what it’s like from day to day. If a better thesis comes along, let go of the old one. Also, don’t think of revision as just rewording. It is a chance to look at the entire paper, not just isolated words and sentences.

What happens if I find that I no longer agree with my own point?

If you take revision seriously, sometimes the process will lead you to questions you cannot answer, objections or exceptions to your thesis, cases that don’t fit, loose ends or contradictions that just won’t go away. If this happens (and it will if you think long enough), then you have several choices. You could choose to ignore the loose ends and hope your reader doesn’t notice them, but that’s risky. You could change your thesis completely to fit your new understanding of the issue, or you could adjust your thesis slightly to accommodate the new ideas. Or you could simply acknowledge the contradictions and show why your main point still holds up in spite of them. Most readers know there are no easy answers, so they may be annoyed if you give them a thesis and try to claim that it is always true with no exceptions no matter what.

How do I get really good at revising?

The same way you get really good at golf, piano, or a video game—do it often. Take revision seriously, be disciplined, and set high standards for yourself. Here are three more tips:

• The more you produce, the more you can cut.
• The more you can imagine yourself as a reader looking at this for the first time, the easier it will be to spot potential problems.
• The more you demand of yourself in terms of clarity and elegance, the more clear and elegant your writing will be.

How do I revise at the sentence level?

Read your paper out loud, sentence by sentence, and follow Peter Elbow’s advice: “Look for places where you stumble or get lost in the middle of a sentence. These are obvious awkwardness’s that need fixing. Look for places where you get distracted or even bored—where you cannot concentrate. These are places where you probably lost focus or concentration in your writing. Cut through the extra words or vagueness or digression; get back to the energy. Listen even for the tiniest jerk or stumble in your reading, the tiniest lessening of your energy or focus or concentration as you say the words . . . A sentence should be alive” (Writing with Power 135).

Practical advice for ensuring that your sentences are alive:

• Use forceful verbs—replace long verb phrases with a more specific verb. For example, replace “She argues for the importance of the idea” with “She defends the idea.”
• Look for places where you’ve used the same word or phrase twice or more in consecutive sentences and look for alternative ways to say the same thing OR for ways to combine the two sentences.
• Cut as many prepositional phrases as you can without losing your meaning. For instance, the following sentence, “There are several examples of the issue of integrity in Huck Finn,” would be much better this way, “Huck Finn repeatedly addresses the issue of integrity.”
• Check your sentence variety. If more than two sentences in a row start the same way (with a subject followed by a verb, for example), then try using a different sentence pattern.
• Aim for precision in word choice. Don’t settle for the best word you can think of at the moment—use a thesaurus (along with a dictionary) to search for the word that says exactly what you want to say.
• Look for sentences that start with “It is” or “There are” and see if you can revise them to be more active and engaging.
• For more information, please visit our handouts on word choice and style .

How can technology help?

Need some help revising? Take advantage of the revision and versioning features available in modern word processors.

Track your changes. Most word processors and writing tools include a feature that allows you to keep your changes visible until you’re ready to accept them. Using “Track Changes” mode in Word or “Suggesting” mode in Google Docs, for example, allows you to make changes without committing to them.

Compare drafts. Tools that allow you to compare multiple drafts give you the chance to visually track changes over time. Try “File History” or “Compare Documents” modes in Google Doc, Word, and Scrivener to retrieve old drafts, identify changes you’ve made over time, or help you keep a bigger picture in mind as you revise.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Elbow, Peter. 1998. Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process . New York: Oxford University Press.

Lanham, Richard A. 2006. Revising Prose , 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

Zinsser, William. 2001. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction , 6th ed. New York: Quill.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

8.4 Revising and Editing

Learning objectives.

• Identify major areas of concern in the draft essay during revising and editing.
• Use peer reviews and editing checklists to assist revising and editing.
• Revise and edit the first draft of your essay and produce a final draft.

Revising and editing are the two tasks you undertake to significantly improve your essay. Both are very important elements of the writing process. You may think that a completed first draft means little improvement is needed. However, even experienced writers need to improve their drafts and rely on peers during revising and editing. You may know that athletes miss catches, fumble balls, or overshoot goals. Dancers forget steps, turn too slowly, or miss beats. For both athletes and dancers, the more they practice, the stronger their performance will become. Web designers seek better images, a more clever design, or a more appealing background for their web pages. Writing has the same capacity to profit from improvement and revision.

Understanding the Purpose of Revising and Editing

Revising and editing allow you to examine two important aspects of your writing separately, so that you can give each task your undivided attention.

• When you revise , you take a second look at your ideas. You might add, cut, move, or change information in order to make your ideas clearer, more accurate, more interesting, or more convincing.
• When you edit , you take a second look at how you expressed your ideas. You add or change words. You fix any problems in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. You improve your writing style. You make your essay into a polished, mature piece of writing, the end product of your best efforts.

How do you get the best out of your revisions and editing? Here are some strategies that writers have developed to look at their first drafts from a fresh perspective. Try them over the course of this semester; then keep using the ones that bring results.

• Take a break. You are proud of what you wrote, but you might be too close to it to make changes. Set aside your writing for a few hours or even a day until you can look at it objectively.
• Ask someone you trust for feedback and constructive criticism.
• Pretend you are one of your readers. Are you satisfied or dissatisfied? Why?
• Use the resources that your college provides. Find out where your school’s writing lab is located and ask about the assistance they provide online and in person.

Many people hear the words critic , critical , and criticism and pick up only negative vibes that provoke feelings that make them blush, grumble, or shout. However, as a writer and a thinker, you need to learn to be critical of yourself in a positive way and have high expectations for your work. You also need to train your eye and trust your ability to fix what needs fixing. For this, you need to teach yourself where to look.

Creating Unity and Coherence

Following your outline closely offers you a reasonable guarantee that your writing will stay on purpose and not drift away from the controlling idea. However, when writers are rushed, are tired, or cannot find the right words, their writing may become less than they want it to be. Their writing may no longer be clear and concise, and they may be adding information that is not needed to develop the main idea.

When a piece of writing has unity , all the ideas in each paragraph and in the entire essay clearly belong and are arranged in an order that makes logical sense. When the writing has coherence , the ideas flow smoothly. The wording clearly indicates how one idea leads to another within a paragraph and from paragraph to paragraph.

Reading your writing aloud will often help you find problems with unity and coherence. Listen for the clarity and flow of your ideas. Identify places where you find yourself confused, and write a note to yourself about possible fixes.

Creating Unity

Sometimes writers get caught up in the moment and cannot resist a good digression. Even though you might enjoy such detours when you chat with friends, unplanned digressions usually harm a piece of writing.

Mariah stayed close to her outline when she drafted the three body paragraphs of her essay she tentatively titled “Digital Technology: The Newest and the Best at What Price?” But a recent shopping trip for an HDTV upset her enough that she digressed from the main topic of her third paragraph and included comments about the sales staff at the electronics store she visited. When she revised her essay, she deleted the off-topic sentences that affected the unity of the paragraph.

Read the following paragraph twice, the first time without Mariah’s changes, and the second time with them.

Nothing is more confusing to me than choosing among televisions. It confuses lots of people who want a new high-definition digital television (HDTV) with a large screen to watch sports and DVDs on. You could listen to the guys in the electronics store, but word has it they know little more than you do. They want to sell what they have in stock, not what best fits your needs. You face decisions you never had to make with the old, bulky picture-tube televisions. Screen resolution means the number of horizontal scan lines the screen can show. This resolution is often 1080p, or full HD, or 768p. The trouble is that if you have a smaller screen, 32 inches or 37 inches diagonal, you won’t be able to tell the difference with the naked eye. The 1080p televisions cost more, though, so those are what the salespeople want you to buy. They get bigger commissions. The other important decision you face as you walk around the sales floor is whether to get a plasma screen or an LCD screen. Now here the salespeople may finally give you decent info. Plasma flat-panel television screens can be much larger in diameter than their LCD rivals. Plasma screens show truer blacks and can be viewed at a wider angle than current LCD screens. But be careful and tell the salesperson you have budget constraints. Large flat-panel plasma screens are much more expensive than flat-screen LCD models. Don’t let someone make you by more television than you need!

Answer the following two questions about Mariah’s paragraph:

Collaboration

Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

• Now start to revise the first draft of the essay you wrote in Section 8 “Writing Your Own First Draft” . Reread it to find any statements that affect the unity of your writing. Decide how best to revise.

When you reread your writing to find revisions to make, look for each type of problem in a separate sweep. Read it straight through once to locate any problems with unity. Read it straight through a second time to find problems with coherence. You may follow this same practice during many stages of the writing process.

Writing at Work

Many companies hire copyeditors and proofreaders to help them produce the cleanest possible final drafts of large writing projects. Copyeditors are responsible for suggesting revisions and style changes; proofreaders check documents for any errors in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation that have crept in. Many times, these tasks are done on a freelance basis, with one freelancer working for a variety of clients.

Creating Coherence

Careful writers use transitions to clarify how the ideas in their sentences and paragraphs are related. These words and phrases help the writing flow smoothly. Adding transitions is not the only way to improve coherence, but they are often useful and give a mature feel to your essays. Table 8.3 “Common Transitional Words and Phrases” groups many common transitions according to their purpose.

Table 8.3 Common Transitional Words and Phrases

After Maria revised for unity, she next examined her paragraph about televisions to check for coherence. She looked for places where she needed to add a transition or perhaps reword the text to make the flow of ideas clear. In the version that follows, she has already deleted the sentences that were off topic.

Many writers make their revisions on a printed copy and then transfer them to the version on-screen. They conventionally use a small arrow called a caret (^) to show where to insert an addition or correction.

1. Answer the following questions about Mariah’s revised paragraph.

2. Now return to the first draft of the essay you wrote in Section 8 “Writing Your Own First Draft” and revise it for coherence. Add transition words and phrases where they are needed, and make any other changes that are needed to improve the flow and connection between ideas.

Being Clear and Concise

Some writers are very methodical and painstaking when they write a first draft. Other writers unleash a lot of words in order to get out all that they feel they need to say. Do either of these composing styles match your style? Or is your composing style somewhere in between? No matter which description best fits you, the first draft of almost every piece of writing, no matter its author, can be made clearer and more concise.

If you have a tendency to write too much, you will need to look for unnecessary words. If you have a tendency to be vague or imprecise in your wording, you will need to find specific words to replace any overly general language.

Identifying Wordiness

Sometimes writers use too many words when fewer words will appeal more to their audience and better fit their purpose. Here are some common examples of wordiness to look for in your draft. Eliminating wordiness helps all readers, because it makes your ideas clear, direct, and straightforward.

Sentences that begin with There is or There are .

Wordy: There are two major experiments that the Biology Department sponsors.

Revised: The Biology Department sponsors two major experiments.

Sentences with unnecessary modifiers.

Wordy: Two extremely famous and well-known consumer advocates spoke eloquently in favor of the proposed important legislation.

Revised: Two well-known consumer advocates spoke in favor of the proposed legislation.

Sentences with deadwood phrases that add little to the meaning. Be judicious when you use phrases such as in terms of , with a mind to , on the subject of , as to whether or not , more or less , as far as…is concerned , and similar expressions. You can usually find a more straightforward way to state your point.

Wordy: As a world leader in the field of green technology, the company plans to focus its efforts in the area of geothermal energy.

A report as to whether or not to use geysers as an energy source is in the process of preparation.

Revised: As a world leader in green technology, the company plans to focus on geothermal energy.

A report about using geysers as an energy source is in preparation.

Sentences in the passive voice or with forms of the verb to be . Sentences with passive-voice verbs often create confusion, because the subject of the sentence does not perform an action. Sentences are clearer when the subject of the sentence performs the action and is followed by a strong verb. Use strong active-voice verbs in place of forms of to be , which can lead to wordiness. Avoid passive voice when you can.

Wordy: It might perhaps be said that using a GPS device is something that is a benefit to drivers who have a poor sense of direction.

Revised: Using a GPS device benefits drivers who have a poor sense of direction.

Sentences with constructions that can be shortened.

Wordy: The e-book reader, which is a recent invention, may become as commonplace as the cell phone.

My over-sixty uncle bought an e-book reader, and his wife bought an e-book reader, too.

Revised: The e-book reader, a recent invention, may become as commonplace as the cell phone.

My over-sixty uncle and his wife both bought e-book readers.

Now return once more to the first draft of the essay you have been revising. Check it for unnecessary words. Try making your sentences as concise as they can be.

Choosing Specific, Appropriate Words

Most college essays should be written in formal English suitable for an academic situation. Follow these principles to be sure that your word choice is appropriate. For more information about word choice, see Chapter 4 “Working with Words: Which Word Is Right?” .

• Avoid slang. Find alternatives to bummer , kewl , and rad .
• Avoid language that is overly casual. Write about “men and women” rather than “girls and guys” unless you are trying to create a specific effect. A formal tone calls for formal language.
• Avoid contractions. Use do not in place of don’t , I am in place of I’m , have not in place of haven’t , and so on. Contractions are considered casual speech.
• Avoid clichés. Overused expressions such as green with envy , face the music , better late than never , and similar expressions are empty of meaning and may not appeal to your audience.
• Be careful when you use words that sound alike but have different meanings. Some examples are allusion/illusion , complement/compliment , council/counsel , concurrent/consecutive , founder/flounder , and historic/historical . When in doubt, check a dictionary.
• Choose words with the connotations you want. Choosing a word for its connotations is as important in formal essay writing as it is in all kinds of writing. Compare the positive connotations of the word proud and the negative connotations of arrogant and conceited .
• Use specific words rather than overly general words. Find synonyms for thing , people , nice , good , bad , interesting , and other vague words. Or use specific details to make your exact meaning clear.

Now read the revisions Mariah made to make her third paragraph clearer and more concise. She has already incorporated the changes she made to improve unity and coherence.

1. Answer the following questions about Mariah’s revised paragraph:

2. Now return once more to your essay in progress. Read carefully for problems with word choice. Be sure that your draft is written in formal language and that your word choice is specific and appropriate.

Completing a Peer Review

After working so closely with a piece of writing, writers often need to step back and ask for a more objective reader. What writers most need is feedback from readers who can respond only to the words on the page. When they are ready, writers show their drafts to someone they respect and who can give an honest response about its strengths and weaknesses.

You, too, can ask a peer to read your draft when it is ready. After evaluating the feedback and assessing what is most helpful, the reader’s feedback will help you when you revise your draft. This process is called peer review .

You can work with a partner in your class and identify specific ways to strengthen each other’s essays. Although you may be uncomfortable sharing your writing at first, remember that each writer is working toward the same goal: a final draft that fits the audience and the purpose. Maintaining a positive attitude when providing feedback will put you and your partner at ease. The box that follows provides a useful framework for the peer review session.

Questions for Peer Review

Title of essay: ____________________________________________

Date: ____________________________________________

Writer’s name: ____________________________________________

Peer reviewer’s name: _________________________________________

• This essay is about____________________________________________.
• Your main points in this essay are____________________________________________.
• What I most liked about this essay is____________________________________________.

These three points struck me as your strongest:

These places in your essay are not clear to me:

a. Where: ____________________________________________

Needs improvement because__________________________________________

b. Where: ____________________________________________

Needs improvement because ____________________________________________

c. Where: ____________________________________________

The one additional change you could make that would improve this essay significantly is ____________________________________________.

One of the reasons why word-processing programs build in a reviewing feature is that workgroups have become a common feature in many businesses. Writing is often collaborative, and the members of a workgroup and their supervisors often critique group members’ work and offer feedback that will lead to a better final product.

Exchange essays with a classmate and complete a peer review of each other’s draft in progress. Remember to give positive feedback and to be courteous and polite in your responses. Focus on providing one positive comment and one question for more information to the author.

Using Feedback Objectively

The purpose of peer feedback is to receive constructive criticism of your essay. Your peer reviewer is your first real audience, and you have the opportunity to learn what confuses and delights a reader so that you can improve your work before sharing the final draft with a wider audience (or your intended audience).

It may not be necessary to incorporate every recommendation your peer reviewer makes. However, if you start to observe a pattern in the responses you receive from peer reviewers, you might want to take that feedback into consideration in future assignments. For example, if you read consistent comments about a need for more research, then you may want to consider including more research in future assignments.

Using Feedback from Multiple Sources

You might get feedback from more than one reader as you share different stages of your revised draft. In this situation, you may receive feedback from readers who do not understand the assignment or who lack your involvement with and enthusiasm for it.

You need to evaluate the responses you receive according to two important criteria:

• Determine if the feedback supports the purpose of the assignment.
• Determine if the suggested revisions are appropriate to the audience.

Then, using these standards, accept or reject revision feedback.

Work with two partners. Go back to Note 8.81 “Exercise 4” in this lesson and compare your responses to Activity A, about Mariah’s paragraph, with your partners’. Recall Mariah’s purpose for writing and her audience. Then, working individually, list where you agree and where you disagree about revision needs.

Editing Your Draft

If you have been incorporating each set of revisions as Mariah has, you have produced multiple drafts of your writing. So far, all your changes have been content changes. Perhaps with the help of peer feedback, you have made sure that you sufficiently supported your ideas. You have checked for problems with unity and coherence. You have examined your essay for word choice, revising to cut unnecessary words and to replace weak wording with specific and appropriate wording.

The next step after revising the content is editing. When you edit, you examine the surface features of your text. You examine your spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation. You also make sure you use the proper format when creating your finished assignment.

Editing often takes time. Budgeting time into the writing process allows you to complete additional edits after revising. Editing and proofreading your writing helps you create a finished work that represents your best efforts. Here are a few more tips to remember about your readers:

• Readers do not notice correct spelling, but they do notice misspellings.
• Readers look past your sentences to get to your ideas—unless the sentences are awkward, poorly constructed, and frustrating to read.
• Readers notice when every sentence has the same rhythm as every other sentence, with no variety.
• Readers do not cheer when you use there , their , and they’re correctly, but they notice when you do not.
• Readers will notice the care with which you handled your assignment and your attention to detail in the delivery of an error-free document..

The first section of this book offers a useful review of grammar, mechanics, and usage. Use it to help you eliminate major errors in your writing and refine your understanding of the conventions of language. Do not hesitate to ask for help, too, from peer tutors in your academic department or in the college’s writing lab. In the meantime, use the checklist to help you edit your writing.

Editing Your Writing

• Are some sentences actually sentence fragments?
• Are some sentences run-on sentences? How can I correct them?
• Do some sentences need conjunctions between independent clauses?
• Does every verb agree with its subject?
• Is every verb in the correct tense?
• Are tense forms, especially for irregular verbs, written correctly?
• Have I used subject, object, and possessive personal pronouns correctly?
• Have I used who and whom correctly?
• Is the antecedent of every pronoun clear?
• Do all personal pronouns agree with their antecedents?
• Have I used the correct comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs?
• Is it clear which word a participial phrase modifies, or is it a dangling modifier?

Sentence Structure

• Are all my sentences simple sentences, or do I vary my sentence structure?
• Have I chosen the best coordinating or subordinating conjunctions to join clauses?
• Have I created long, overpacked sentences that should be shortened for clarity?
• Do I see any mistakes in parallel structure?

Punctuation

• Does every sentence end with the correct end punctuation?
• Can I justify the use of every exclamation point?
• Have I used apostrophes correctly to write all singular and plural possessive forms?
• Have I used quotation marks correctly?

Mechanics and Usage

• Can I find any spelling errors? How can I correct them?
• Have I used capital letters where they are needed?
• Have I written abbreviations, where allowed, correctly?
• Can I find any errors in the use of commonly confused words, such as to / too / two ?

Be careful about relying too much on spelling checkers and grammar checkers. A spelling checker cannot recognize that you meant to write principle but wrote principal instead. A grammar checker often queries constructions that are perfectly correct. The program does not understand your meaning; it makes its check against a general set of formulas that might not apply in each instance. If you use a grammar checker, accept the suggestions that make sense, but consider why the suggestions came up.

Proofreading requires patience; it is very easy to read past a mistake. Set your paper aside for at least a few hours, if not a day or more, so your mind will rest. Some professional proofreaders read a text backward so they can concentrate on spelling and punctuation. Another helpful technique is to slowly read a paper aloud, paying attention to every word, letter, and punctuation mark.

If you need additional proofreading help, ask a reliable friend, a classmate, or a peer tutor to make a final pass on your paper to look for anything you missed.

Remember to use proper format when creating your finished assignment. Sometimes an instructor, a department, or a college will require students to follow specific instructions on titles, margins, page numbers, or the location of the writer’s name. These requirements may be more detailed and rigid for research projects and term papers, which often observe the American Psychological Association (APA) or Modern Language Association (MLA) style guides, especially when citations of sources are included.

To ensure the format is correct and follows any specific instructions, make a final check before you submit an assignment.

With the help of the checklist, edit and proofread your essay.

Key Takeaways

• Revising and editing are the stages of the writing process in which you improve your work before producing a final draft.
• During revising, you add, cut, move, or change information in order to improve content.
• During editing, you take a second look at the words and sentences you used to express your ideas and fix any problems in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.
• Unity in writing means that all the ideas in each paragraph and in the entire essay clearly belong together and are arranged in an order that makes logical sense.
• Coherence in writing means that the writer’s wording clearly indicates how one idea leads to another within a paragraph and between paragraphs.
• Transitional words and phrases effectively make writing more coherent.
• Writing should be clear and concise, with no unnecessary words.
• Effective formal writing uses specific, appropriate words and avoids slang, contractions, clichés, and overly general words.
• Peer reviews, done properly, can give writers objective feedback about their writing. It is the writer’s responsibility to evaluate the results of peer reviews and incorporate only useful feedback.
• Remember to budget time for careful editing and proofreading. Use all available resources, including editing checklists, peer editing, and your institution’s writing lab, to improve your editing skills.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Writing Center

How to revise drafts, now the real work begins....

After writing the first draft of an essay, you may think much of your work is done, but actually the real work – revising – is just beginning. The good news is that by this point in the writing process you have gained some perspective and can ask yourself some questions: Did I develop my subject matter appropriately? Did my thesis change or evolve during writing? Did I communicate my ideas effectively and clearly? Would I like to revise, but feel uncertain about how to do it?

Also see the UMN Crookston Writing Center's  Revising and Editing Handout .

How to Revise

First, put your draft aside for a little while.  Time away from your essay will allow for more objective self-evaluation. When you do return to the draft, be honest with yourself; ask yourself what you really think about the paper.

Check the  focus  of the paper.  Is it appropriate to the assignment prompt? Is the topic too big or too narrow? Do you stay on track throughout the entire paper? (At this stage, you should be concerned with the large, content-related issues in the paper, not the grammar and sentence structure).

Get  feedback .  Since you already know what you’re trying to say, you aren’t always the best judge of where your draft is clear or unclear. Let another reader tell you. Then discuss aloud what you were trying to achieve. In articulating for someone else what you meant to argue, you will clarify ideas for yourself.

Think honestly about your thesis.  Do you still agree with it? Should it be modified in light of something you discovered as you wrote the paper? Does it make a sophisticated, provocative point? Or does it just say what anyone could say if given the same topic? Does your thesis generalize instead of taking a specific position? Should it be changed completely?

Examine the  balance  within your paper.  Are some parts out of proportion with others? Do you spend too much time on one trivial point and neglect a more important point? Do you give lots of details early on and then let your points get thinner by the end? Based on what you did in the previous step, restructure your argument: reorder your points and cut anything that’s irrelevant or redundant. You may want to return to your sources for additional supporting evidence.

Now that you know what you’re really arguing, work on your  introduction and conclusion . Make sure to begin your paragraphs with topic sentences, linking the idea(s) in each paragraph to those proposed in the thesis.

Proofread.  Aim for precision and economy in language. Read aloud so you can hear imperfections. (Your ear may pick up what your eye has missed). Note that this step comes LAST. There’s no point in making a sentence grammatically perfect if it’s going to be changed or deleted anyway.

As you revise your own work, keep the following in mind:

Revision means rethinking your thesis. It is unreasonable to expect to come up with the best thesis possible – one that accounts for all aspects of your topic – before beginning a draft, or even during a first draft. The best theses evolve; they are actually produced during the writing process. Successful revision involves bringing your thesis into focus—or changing it altogether.

Revision means making structural changes. Drafting is usually a process of discovering an idea or argument. Your argument will not become clearer if you only tinker with individual sentences. Successful revision involves bringing the strongest ideas to the front of the essay, reordering the main points, and cutting irrelevant sections. It also involves making the argument’s structure visible by strengthening topic sentences and transitions.

Revision takes time. Avoid shortcuts: the reward for sustained effort is an essay that is clearer, more persuasive, and more sophisticated.

Think about your purpose in writing: Does your introduction clearly state what you intend to do? Will your aims be clear to your readers?

Check the organization. Does your paper follow a pattern that makes sense? Doe the transitions move your readers smoothly from one point to the next? Do the topic sentences of each paragraph appropriately introduce what that paragraph is about? Would your paper be work better if you moved some things around?

Check your information. Are all your facts accurate? Are any of our statements misleading? Have you provided enough detail to satisfy readers’ curiosity? Have you cited all your information appropriately?

Revision doesn’t necessarily mean rewriting the whole paper. Sometimes it means revising the thesis to match what you’ve discovered while writing. Sometimes it means coming up with stronger arguments to defend your position, or coming up with more vivid examples to illustrate your points. Sometimes it means shifting the order of your paper to help the reader follow your argument, or to change the emphasis of your points. Sometimes it means adding or deleting material for balance or emphasis. And then, sadly, sometimes revision does mean trashing your first draft and starting from scratch. Better that than having the teacher trash your final paper.

Revising Sentences

Read your paper out loud, sentence by sentence, and look for places where you stumble or get lost in the middle of a sentence. These are obvious places that need fixing. Look for places where you get distracted or even bored – where you cannot concentrate. These are places where you probably lost focus or concentration in your writing. Cut through the extra words or vagueness or digression: get back to the energy.

Tips for writing good sentences:

Use forceful verbs – replace long verb phrases with a more specific verb. For example, replace “She argues for the importance of the idea” with ‘she defends the idea.” Also, try to stay in the active voice.

Look for places where you’ve used the same word or phrase twice or more in consecutive sentences and look for alternative ways to say the same thing OR for ways to combine the two sentences.

Cut as many prepositional phrases as you can without losing your meaning. For instance, the sentence “There are several examples of the issue of integrity in  Huck Finn ” would be much better this way: “ Huck Finn  repeated addresses the issue of integrity.”

Check your sentence variety. IF more than two sentences in a row start the same way (with a subject followed by a verb, for example), then try using a different sentence pattern. Also, try to mix simple sentences with compound and compound-complex sentences for variety.

Aim for precision in word choice. Don’t settle for the best word you can think of at the moment—use a thesaurus (along with a dictionary) to search for the word that says exactly what you want to say.

Look for sentences that start with “it is” or “there are” and see if you can revise them to be more active and engaging.

By Jocelyn Rolling, English Instructor Last edited October 2016 by Allison Haas, M.A.

Academic Revising 101: The Essential Essay Revision Checklist

by Suzanne Davis | Feb 8, 2018 | Academic Writing Skills , Writing Essays and Papers

What do you do after you write the first draft of your essay?

You should feel proud because you just finished the hard work of taking ideas and information and writing the first draft.  It’s the hardest obstacle to overcome. But you still need to revise and shape it into a great final essay.  I created an essay revision checklist to guide you through the entire revising process.

Revision is key the to great writing.  Author E.B. White stated, “The best writing is rewriting.”  So, get excited about revising because you’re taking your writing and making it your best writing.

The Essay Revision Process

When you finish a first draft take a break.  Wait a few hours or if possible a day.  You will come back to your writing with a fresh pair of eyes.   Then go back to your essay and launch into revising it.

In this post, I show you a three-phase revision process that has some overlap with editing.   But, I focus on revising because it includes deeper changes to ideas and information in your essay.

The essay revision checklist here has three sections:  content, organization, and clarity.  Go through each section separately.  Move on from one section to the next when you’ve completed everything in a section.

The Essay Revision Checklist

Revising the content of an essay.

Content is the substance of your essay.  It’s the topic, main ideas and supporting reasons that connect back to your thesis statement.   If you don’t have strong content your essay is a group of fluffy words.

Checklist for Good Essay Content

• Content reveals the purpose of your essay or paper.
• There is a complex and supportable thesis statement.
• The main ideas support the thesis statement.
• There are supporting details for each of the main ideas.
• There is evidence to support the main ideas and thesis statement.

Keep revising the essay until you can check off each of these elements.

Revising the Organization of an Essay

Essays are organized into 3 basic parts: the introduction, body, and conclusion.

The introduction has a hook, overview of the topic or description of the situation, and the thesis statement. The body contains the ideas and details that support the thesis statement.  It’s the heart of your essay content.   The conclusion summarizes the thesis statement and describes the significance of it.

Checklist for Good Essay Organization

• The introduction starts with a hook.  A hook is a sentence or a few sentences that capture your reader’s interest.  Read, “7 Sensational Types of Essays Hooks”   https://www.academicwritingsuccess.com/7-sensational-types-of-essay-hooks/ and see different hooks you can use in your writing.
• The introduction has an overview of the topic that leads to the thesis statement.
• The body of the essay is organized so that the main ideas follow the sequence of things stated in your thesis .  For example, if your thesis statement lists three causes of something: Cause A, Cause B, and Cause C.  The first part of your essay examines Cause A.  The second part examines Cause B etc.
• The conclusion reviews the thesis statement and points out something significant about it. It shows some importance to your field, to people in general, to life, history, etc. Why does your thesis matter?

Revising Your Essay for Clarity

Clarity means that your ideas, sentences, and words are easy to understand.  Clarity is the window through which the reader sees your meaning.  If your essay is unclear, the content of your essay is confusing.

When you revise your essay for clarity analyze the ideas, sentences, and words in your writing.  I’ve included in this checklist the common problems I see in essays.

Checklist for Essay Clarity

• There is subject-verb agreement throughout the essay.  A singular subject has a singular verb tense. Plural subjects have plural verb tenses.  An example of a singular subject and singular verb tense is: He drinks hot coffee .  A plural subject with a plural verb tense is: They drink ice tea.
• There is good sentence flow . Fix any run-ons, incomplete sentences, short choppy sentences or just very long sentences. Make sure you have sentence variety in your essay.  Not all your sentences are short, and not all sentences are long.  Mix it up.
• There are no unclear or confusing words or phrases .   Don’t overuse academic vocabulary or the thesaurus.  Use words and phrases you understand .
• The Point of View (POV) (1 st person, 2 nd person or 3 rd person) is consistent and appropriate for the essay.   Most academic essays are written from the 3 rd person (he, she, they, it,) POV.  Usually, narrative essays and descriptive essays use the 1 st person (I, me, we, us,) POV.   Rarely is an essay written from the 2 nd person (you, your) POV.
• The pronouns agree in number and person .   For information on pronoun agreement, see Purdue OWL, “Using Pronouns Clearly.” https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/595/01/
• T he punctuation is correct .

After the Revision Process

When you’re done with the checklist, get another person to read your essay.  Ask that person for suggestions.  This could be a classmate, a peer tutor, or a private tutor (in-person or online).

Your professor might offer to help you during office hours. Professors are busy, so check to see if they offer that kind of assistance.  Writing professors usually do.  Professors of other subjects will tell you to go to a tutor.

Next, edit and proofread for grammar and spelling mistakes.   Don’t just use a spell checker/ grammar checker or Grammarly.  Read your essay aloud and listen for mistakes.  When you read aloud you read slower and see more punctuation problems.  You also notice missing words.

Another great tip is to read your paper from the last sentence all the way back to the first sentence.  This way you’re not focusing on the content and how things fit together.  You see each sentence individually.  It’s easier to find grammar mistakes when you focus on one sentence at a time.

I teach students this 3-part revision process because it highlights the key elements of an academic essay.  It helps you analyze content, organize content, and make your essay clear to the reader.   This essay revision checklist will help you change your first draft into a strong piece of academic writing.

Are you revising an academic paper? Then download your free copy of The Roadmap to Revising Academic Writing and Handing in a Great Final Paper! Each section has a list of questions that will help you revise the content, organization, and clarity of an academic paper.    Sign-up at the form above and get your free guide now!

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An Essay Revision Checklist

Guidelines for Revising a Composition

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• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Revision  means looking again at what we have written to see how we can improve it. Some of us start revising as soon as we begin a rough  draft —restructuring and rearranging sentences as we work out our ideas. Then we return to the draft, perhaps several times, to make further revisions.

Revision as Opportunity

Revising is an opportunity to reconsider our topic, our readers, even our purpose for writing . Taking the time to rethink our approach may encourage us to make major changes in the content and structure of our work.

As a general rule, the best time to revise is not right after you've completed a draft (although at times this is unavoidable). Instead, wait a few hours—even a day or two, if possible—in order to gain some distance from your work. This way you'll be less protective of your writing and better prepared to make changes. 

One last bit of advice: read your work aloud when you revise. You may hear problems in your writing that you can't see.

"Never think that what you've written can't be improved. You should always try to make the sentence that much better and make a scene that much clearer. Go over and over the words and reshape them as many times as is needed," (Tracy Chevalier, "Why I Write." The Guardian , 24 Nov. 2006).

Revision Checklist

• Does the essay have a clear and concise main idea? Is this idea made clear to the reader in a thesis statement early in the essay (usually in the introduction )?
• Does the essay have a specific purpose (such as to inform, entertain, evaluate, or persuade)? Have you made this purpose clear to the reader?
• Does the introduction create interest in the topic and make your audience want to read on?
• Is there a clear plan and sense of organization to the essay? Does each paragraph develop logically from the previous one?
• Is each paragraph clearly related to the main idea of the essay? Is there enough information in the essay to support the main idea?
• Is the main point of each paragraph clear? Is each point adequately and clearly defined in a topic sentence and supported with specific details ?
• Are there clear transitions from one paragraph to the next? Have key words and ideas been given proper emphasis in the sentences and paragraphs?
• Are the sentences clear and direct? Can they be understood on the first reading? Are the sentences varied in length and structure? Could any sentences be improved by combining or restructuring them?
• Are the words in the essay clear and precise? Does the essay maintain a consistent tone ?
• Does the essay have an effective conclusion —one that emphasizes the main idea and provides a sense of completeness?

Once you have finished revising your essay, you can turn your attention to the finer details of editing and proofreading your work.

Line Editing Checklist

• Is each sentence  clear and complete ?
• Can any short, choppy sentences be improved by  combining  them?
• Can any long, awkward sentences be improved by breaking them down into shorter units and recombining them?
• Can any wordy sentences be made more  concise ?
• Can any  run-on sentences  be more effectively  coordinated  or  subordinated ?
• Does  each verb agree with its subject ?
• Are all  verb  forms correct and consistent?
• Do  pronouns  refer clearly to the appropriate  nouns ?
• Do all  modifying words and phrases  refer clearly to the words they are intended to modify?
• Is each word  spelled  correctly?
• Is the  punctuation  correct?
• revision (composition)
• 6 Steps to Writing the Perfect Personal Essay
• An Introduction to Academic Writing
• How Do You Edit an Essay?
• Paragraph Writing
• How To Write an Essay
• What Is Expository Writing?
• Development in Composition: Building an Essay
• Definition and Examples of Analysis in Composition
• Make Your Paragraphs Flow to Improve Writing
• Revising a Paper
• Definiton and Examples of Faulty Pronoun Reference
• Editing and Proofreading Marks in Composition
• Definition and Examples of Body Paragraphs in Composition
• Unity in Composition
• Explore and Evaluate Your Writing Process

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Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, working through revision: rethink, revise, reflect.

• CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by Megan McIntyre - University of Arkansas

Revision is what happens after you’ve written something; this might mean you have a full draft or a paragraph or two. It’s an opportunity for you to revisit your work, rethink your approach, and make changes to your text so that your work better fits the task you were given or your goals for writing in the first place. In what follows, I lay out some definitions for revision and then offer five steps that can help you revise your work in thoughtful but manageable ways. These steps are most helpful when you have a section or the full piece drafted but can also be helpful at most any step of the writing process.

Revision is your chance to revisit your work and rethink how you’ve approached the writing situation (whether a writing assignment for a class, an article for your school’s student paper, or a brief document, like a memo, for your job or internship). Revising a draft means reviewing what you’ve already written and (often with the help of feedback from a teacher, supervisor, colleague, or peer) making changes, usually significant, to the text you’ve written. 

As Joseph M. Moxley lays out in his “ Revision: Questions to Consider ,” there are a few key areas where you might make revisions:

• The purpose, focus, or thesis of your text
• The evidence or support you use
• The organization or order of information
• The formatting, style, or layout of your text

Revision might also involve making smaller changes, though that’s often called “ editing ,” which focuses on sentence-level changes to grammar, style, word choice, and/or punctuation. Polished texts tend to undergo both revision and editing at various stages of the writing process.

Five Steps for Making Substantive but Manageable Revisions

Now that we know what revision is, let’s talk about how to do it. As an experienced writer and a long-time writing teacher, I’ve found that there are five key steps for successfully revising my work. First, I solicit feedback. In some classes, feedback may be a required part of the writing process (like when your teacher requires you to submit a draft so that they can offer you suggestions). Even if it’s not, though, you can reach out for feedback from your professors, supervisors, or peers; you might also make an appointment at your university’s writing center. Once I have feedback from trusted sources, I need to interpret that feedback (step two) and translate it into concrete plans for revision (step three). Next (step four), I need to make changes to the text itself. Below, I’ll share some strategies for doing this work, including creating a reverse outline, focusing on the thesis or main idea, reading only for evidence, examining introductions and conclusions, and reading aloud for flow, connection, and clarity of ideas. Finally (step 5), I reflect on the changes I’ve made by revisiting the feedback I received and articulating how my revisions respond to that feedback and improve my work.

Step 1: Ask for Feedback

When feedback is already part of your class , you won’t really have to ask for feedback, but it can still be useful to think about the kind of feedback that you most want: are you struggling with making sure your essay makes a specific point and that point is clear to the reader? If so, this may mean that feedback about your main idea (sometimes called a thesis ) could be helpful. Or would you like feedback about your evidence (the sources you chose, how you used quotations or paraphrased the work you cited, the details you selected, or whether there’s enough support for the claims you make)? Would you like to know how well the reader (whether your professor or a peer) could follow the organization ? Articulating the kind of feedback you want can help your reader focus their attention; it can also help you re-read your own work with a critical eye.

When you want to ask your professor or supervisor for feedback , consider some of the same questions as above, and ask your professor/supervisor directly. The more specific you are about the kind of feedback you want, the easier it will be for your reader to figure out how to help. Be cognizant, though, of the time you’re asking your reader to spend, and give them enough turnaround time to actually give you useful feedback prior to the deadline. For instance, if you want feedback about the organization of a five-page paper, a week may not be enough time, given your professor’s other responsibilities. If, though, you want feedback on a smaller section like your introduction, conclusion, main idea, or a single paragraph in the paper, a week may be enough time. Professors may also have different practices for giving feedback; for example, some may ask you to meet them during office hours to talk through your draft or questions while others may be happy to provide written feedback via email. Always check your syllabus and/or the assignment to see if there’s information about the best way to proceed.

If you decided to reach out for feedback, here’s a template that might be helpful:

Dear Professor [professor’s last name],

My name is [your name], and I’m a student in [name of class]. I was hoping you might have time to give me some feedback on [name of the assignment]. Specifically, I was hoping you would read [part of paper] and give me feedback on my [particular issue; for example, you might ask about use of sources, the organization of the paragraph, or the paragraph’s connection back to the main idea of the text] .

When you visit the writing center : here, too, you might consider asking some of the same questions above: would feedback about your main idea be helpful? Or would you like feedback about your evidence? Would you like to know how well the reader could follow the organization? Many writing center consultations involve reading your paper aloud with the writing consultant, but for longer papers, you may not have time to review the entire text. What part of the paper do you want to focus on first? One other tip: bring the assignment itself and any feedback you’ve already received with you to your writing center appointment. Your consultant can help you review both the assignment and previous feedback and help you make a plan for revision.

Step 2: Interpret Feedback : Once you’ve asked for feedback, you’ll need to (1) figure out what it means, (2) make a plan about how to incorporate the feedback, and (3) make changes to your text. Feedback might do some or all of the following things: tell you how your text is working well, ask questions meant to lead to revision or point out areas that aren’t working, and give you advice for how to make changes to the text. Let’s look at examples of each of these and think about how we might translate those into a to-do list of sorts.

Look for information about what’s already working : generous readers often want writers to know what their text does well, and instructors might begin their feedback by telling students what’s already working. This positive feedback shouldn’t just make us feel good about our work. (Though, we should; writing is hard work!) This positive feedback can also give us a blueprint for how to revise sections that aren’t working as well. Let’s look at an example

Here, the instructor tells the writer that the first sentences of this paragraph “offer a clear, specific idea of what the paragraph will cover.” These kinds of “topic sentences” help readers more easily follow an idea or argument, and this piece of positive feedback means we have a clear idea of how to do that work well, so we might ask ourselves, “how well do the opening sentences of my other paragraphs prepare the reader for the content of the paragraph?”If the answer is “not that well,” consider using the topic sentence your reviewer commented on as a model for revision.

Look for information about what’s not working: Feedback will often also point to places in your text that are not quite working. This may take the form of questions that ask for additional information (e.g., “What evidence do you have to support that?” or “How do you know that?”), express confusion (e.g., “As a reader, I’m not sure I follow the order of information in this paragraph.”), or point to places that need specific revisions or additions (e.g., “This paragraph feels disconnected to me. It needs a transition that connects it to the paragraph before it.”). Each of these questions or comments could lead to a specific revision. For example, if my reader asks, “How do you know that?,” it likely means that I need to add additional evidence, detail, and/or context to make it clear how I came to a particular conclusion. I’ll want to make sure to note these questions as I’m drafting my revision plan in the step below.

Look for advice about how to make changes or which changes to make: Sometimes, like with the last example above (“This paragraph feels disconnected to me. It needs a transition that connects it to the paragraph before it.”), your reader will also tell you what kind of changes to make. In this case, adding a transitional sentence or idea will help solve the problem the reader identifies (the lack of connection between paragraphs and ideas). 

Step 3: Translate Feedback into a Concrete Revision Plan

List changes in order of importance or impact: Once you have gotten feedback and spent some time thinking about what that feedback means, you’ll need to make a plan for addressing the feedback. In a separate document, make a list of the feedback you’ve gotten; then, put it in order according to which piece of feedback might lead to revisions that will have the most significant impact on the draft. Let’s think about an example: on a recent draft of an article I wrote, the reviewers gave me three pieces of feedback:

• Add additional evidence to the first section of the text
• Reorder the paragraphs in the final section so that the sections are better connected to one another
• Use fewer contractions throughout

Now, it might be tempting to do the final thing (“use fewer contractions throughout”) first; after all, this is the easiest and most straightforward piece of feedback to implement. But, is that the best place to start? Probably not. First of all, adding evidence and changing the organization of a section may mean deleting sentences that contain contractions or adding new sentences with contractions. That is to say, taking on the first two pieces of feedback may change my plan for responding to that third piece of feedback. And secondly, if I have a very limited time to make the requested revisions, spending time on those first two pieces of feedback will likely have the greatest impact on my draft. They require more work on my part, but they also lead to more significant and impactful revisions to my text.

Decide if there’s feedback that you disagree with and/or don’t plan to incorporate. All feedback is useful because it helps us as writers understand how readers interpret our work, but just because all feedback is useful doesn’t mean we have to implement every piece of feedback we get. If there are suggestions for revision with which you disagree, it’s important for you to articulate (both to yourself and, if possible, to your professor or supervisor) why you disagree and/or why you aren’t planning to make the suggested changes. Let’s think through an example: when I was in graduate school, I wrote a final paper about teaching for one of my theory classes. Throughout the paper, I used “I.” During peer review, one of my peers commented that the use of “I” undercut my authority and credibility and that I should change everything to third person. I disagreed: I think using “I” in that paper gave me more credibility because it allowed me to make clear that my claims were based both on the sources I was using as evidence and on my own experiences. I didn’t stop using “I,” and when asked by my professor why, I told her exactly what I just wrote here: using “I” was an important part of my approach to this topic, and I thought it enhanced my credibility. Sometimes, feedback asks us to make changes that go against the goals or purposes we have for our writing, and when that happens, it sometimes makes sense to decide against incorporating that feedback. The key is to know why you’re making such a choice and to be able to articulate that reason to others.

Share your plan with your professor/supervisor: At this point in the process (when you’ve received specific feedback but haven’t started making changes to your text) it might be a good idea to send a brief email or have a brief conversation with the person who gave you the assignment to see if your plan for revisions also make sense to them. If there are changes suggested by your readers that you’re not planning to incorporate, this is also a good time to articulate that to your professor and discuss why you don’t plan to make those particular changes. Your professor or supervisor might also have some additional suggestions for how to make changes that could be helpful as you begin to make revisions.

Step 4: Make Changes

In many of the examples above, there are specific, concrete changes that flow naturally from the feedback I received. But sometimes, feedback is more general or applies to a large section of a text. In those cases, you might need some additional strategies for figuring out which specific changes you want to make and how to make those changes. Here are few strategies that might be helpful at this point in the process: 

Create a reverse outline: Creating a reverse outline allows you to see the main ideas of each of your paragraphs and think about the overall organization of your text. To create a reverse outline, you’ll need a full draft of your text. Next to each paragraph, add a word or phrase that conveys the main topic of the paragraph. (If you find yourself wanting to write multiple words/phrases, that’s often an indication that the paragraph in question should be more than one paragraph.) Once you’ve done this for each paragraph, make a list of these words and phrases in order. Are there similar words or phrases in different sections of your text? Do you need to move paragraphs around to make sure similar ideas are close to one another? Does the order of ideas make sense to you? Is there an important idea missing?

Focus on the thesis or main idea: Focusing on your main idea allows you to ensure that the text serves the purpose you intended or makes the argument you intended. Start by highlighting or underlining your main idea. Does the section you underlined adequately capture what you intended your main idea to be? Are there things missing? 

Next, look at each paragraph. Does each of your paragraphs move your reader closer to understanding that main idea? Are there ideas covered by paragraphs or sections that don’t show up in your main idea? If so, should you revise your main idea to represent these ideas? Or, if there are sections that don’t help to advance your readers’ understanding of the main idea, should you remove these sections?

Review your evidence: Each of your paragraphs needs evidence. Different kinds of text use different kinds of evidence. Sometimes, evidence takes the form of quotes, paraphrases, or ideas from scholarly or expert sources. Other times, evidence takes the form of specific details or narratives. Thinking about your purpose for writing (and, if there’s an assignment involved, the specific requirements of the assignment), what kinds of evidence does your text need? Do each of your paragraphs have adequate evidence to support the main idea or purpose of that paragraph?

Examine introductions and conclusions : Introductions and conclusions give writers a chance to clearly communicate their purposes, so it’s always a great idea to review these two sections as you make revisions. Does your introduction help the reader understand both your topic and your purpose for writing about it? Does your conclusion make clear what you wanted your reader to understand? Making changes to introductions and conclusions can make a big difference to your reader’s overall experience of your text.

Step 5: Reflect on the Changes You’ve Made

So now you’re done, right? You’ve solicited feedback, interpreted the comments you received, and made changes to your work. What’s left? The answer is reflection. Reflection asks us to look back on the process that allowed us to compose and revise our texts and think about how that process and the changes we’ve made might help us compose differently in the future.Taking time to reflect allows you to think through how the feedback you received on this piece of writing might change your writing process moving forward. What have you learned about your strengths as a writer? What have you learned about your challenges? What have you learned about how to address those challenges? Answering these questions will allow you to more easily apply what you’ve learned writing this specific document to other writing contexts.

Revisit feedback: Once you’ve made changes to your text, it’s a good idea to return to the feedback and consider if there’s anything in that feedback you haven’t yet responded to. Did the feedback include a suggested revision you decided not to make? Are there additional changes that the feedback encourages? If you’ve chosen not to implement any of the suggested changes, how would you justify that decision?

Articulate how the changes you made address that feedback : Finally, it can be useful to take a few minutes to articulate how the revisions you made address the feedback you received. What changes did you actually make to your text? And for each of those changes, what piece of feedback were you responding to? These notes might be helpful as you work on future drafts of this project and/or future writing projects.

Reflect on (and write a little about) how this process of writing, feedback, and revision might change your process moving forward. This is your chance to take a few notes about how you might approach another writing situation differently because of what you’ve learned about yourself as a writer. What has this process taught you about your strengths? What has it taught you about your challenges? How will you approach those challenges differently based on what you learned here?

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Revising an Argumentative Paper

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Introduction

You’ve written a full draft of an argumentative paper. You’ve figured out what you’re generally saying and have put together one way to say it. But you’re not done. The best writing is revised writing, and you want to re–view, re–see, re–consider your argument to make sure that it’s as strong as possible. You’ll come back to smaller issues later (e.g., Is your language compelling? Are your paragraphs clearly and seamlessly connected? Are any of your sentences confusing?). But before you get into the details of phrases and punctuation, you need to focus on making sure your argument is as strong and persuasive as it can be. This page provides you with eight specific strategies for how to take on the important challenge of revising an argument.

• Give yourself time.
• Outline your argumentative claims and evidence.
• Analyze your argument’s assumptions.
• Revise with your audience in mind.
• Be your own most critical reader.
• Look for dissonance.
• Try “provocative revision.”
• Ask others to look critically at your argument.

1. Give yourself time.

The best way to begin re–seeing your argument is first to stop seeing it. Set your paper aside for a weekend, a day, or even a couple of hours. Of course, this will require you to have started your writing process well before your paper is due. But giving yourself this time allows you to refresh your perspective and separate yourself from your initial ideas and organization. When you return to your paper, try to approach your argument as a tough, critical reader. Reread it carefully. Maybe even read it out loud to hear it in a fresh way. Let the distance you created inform how you now see the paper differently.

2. Outline your argumentative claims and evidence.

This strategy combines the structure of a reverse outline with elements of argument that philosopher Stephen Toulmin detailed in his influential book The Uses of Argument . As you’re rereading your work, have a blank piece of paper or a new document next to you and write out:

• Your main claim (your thesis statement).
• Your sub–claims (the smaller claims that contribute to the larger claim).
• All the evidence you use to back up each of your claims.

Detailing these core elements of your argument helps you see its basic structure and assess whether or not your argument is convincing. This will also help you consider whether the most crucial elements of the argument are supported by the evidence and if they are logically sequenced to build upon each other.

In what follows we’ve provided a full example of what this kind of outline can look like. In this example, we’ve broken down the key argumentative claims and kinds of supporting evidence that Derek Thompson develops in his July/August 2015 Atlantic feature “ A World Without Work. ” This is a provocative and fascinating article, and we highly recommend it.

Charted Argumentative Claims and Evidence “ A World Without Work ” by Derek Thompson ( The Atlantic , July/August 2015) Main claim : Machines are making workers obsolete, and while this has the potential to disrupt and seriously damage American society, if handled strategically through governmental guidance, it also has the potential of helping us to live more communal, creative, and empathetic lives. Sub–claim : The disappearance of work would radically change the United States. Evidence: personal experience and observation Sub–claim : This is because work functions as something of an unofficial religion to Americans. Sub–claim : Technology has always guided the U.S. labor force. Evidence: historical examples Sub–claim: But now technology may be taking over our jobs. Sub–claim : However, the possibility that technology will take over our jobs isn’t anything new, nor is the fear that this possibility generates. Evidence: historical examples Sub–claim : So far, that fear hasn’t been justified, but it may now be because: 1. Businesses don’t require people to work like they used to. Evidence: statistics 2. More and more men and youths are unemployed. Evidence: statistics 3. Computer technology is advancing in majorly sophisticated ways. Evidence: historical examples and expert opinions Counter–argument: But technology has been radically advancing for 300 years and people aren’t out of work yet. Refutation: The same was once said about the horse. It was a key economic player; technology was built around it until technology began to surpass it. This parallels what will happen with retail workers, cashiers, food service employees, and office clerks. Evidence:: an academic study Counter–argument: But technology creates jobs too. Refutation: Yes, but not as quickly as it takes them away. Evidence: statistics Sub–claim : There are three overlapping visions of what the world might look like without work: 1. Consumption —People will not work and instead devote their freedom to leisure. Sub–claim : People don’t like their jobs. Evidence: polling data Sub–claim : But they need them. Evidence: expert insight Sub–claim : People might be happier if they didn’t have to work. Evidence: expert insight Counter–argument: But unemployed people don’t tend to be socially productive. Evidence: survey data Sub–claim : Americans feel guilty if they aren’t working. Evidence: statistics and academic studies Sub–claim : Future leisure activities may be nourishing enough to stave off this guilt. 2. Communal creativity —People will not work and will build productive, artistic, engaging communities outside the workplace. Sub–claim: This could be a good alternative to work. Evidence: personal experience and observation 3. Contingency —People will not work one big job like they used to and so will fight to regain their sense of productivity by piecing together small jobs. Evidence: personal experience and observation. Sub–claim : The internet facilitates gig work culture. Evidence: examples of internet-facilitated gig employment Sub–claim : No matter the form the labor force decline takes, it would require government support/intervention in regards to the issues of taxes and income distribution. Sub–claim : Productive things governments could do: • Local governments should create more and more ambitious community centers to respond to unemployment’s loneliness and its diminishment of community pride. • Government should create more small business incubators. Evidence: This worked in Youngstown. • Governments should encourage job sharing. Evidence: This worked for Germany. Counter–argument: Some jobs can’t be shared, and job sharing doesn’t fix the problem in the long term. Given this counter argument: • Governments should heavily tax the owners of capital and cut checks to all adults. Counter–argument: The capital owners would push against this, and this wouldn’t provide an alternative to the social function work plays. Refutation: Government should pay people to do something instead of nothing via an online job–posting board open up to governments, NGOs, and the like. • Governments should incentivize school by paying people to study. Sub–claim : There is a difference between jobs, careers, and calling, and a fulfilled life is lived in pursuit of a calling. Evidence: personal experience and observations

Some of the possible, revision-informing questions that this kind of outline can raise are:

• Are all the claims thoroughly supported by evidence?
• What kinds of evidence are used across the whole argument? Is the nature of the evidence appropriate given your context, purpose, and audience?
• How are the sub–claims related to each other? How do they build off of each other and work together to logically further the larger claim?
• Do any of your claims need to be qualified in order to be made more precise?
• Where and how are counter–arguments raised? Are they fully and fairly addressed?

For more information about the Toulmin Method, we recommend John Ramage, John Bean, and June Johnson’s book Written Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings.

3. Analyze your argument’s assumptions.

In building arguments we make assumptions either explicitly or implicitly that connect our evidence to our claims. For example, in “A World Without Work,” as Thompson makes claims about the way technology will change the future of work, he is assuming that computer technology will keep advancing in major and surprising ways. This assumption helps him connect the evidence he provides about technology’s historical precedents to his claims about the future of work. Many of us would agree that it is reasonable to assume that technological advancement will continue, but it’s still important to recognize this as an assumption underlying his argument.

To identify your assumptions, return to the claims and evidence that you outlined in response to recommendation #2. Ask yourself, “What assumptions am I making about this piece of evidence in order to connect this evidence to this claim?” Write down those assumptions, and then ask yourself, “Are these assumptions reasonable? Are they acknowledged in my argument? If not, do they need to be?”

Often you will not overtly acknowledge your assumptions, and that can be fine. But especially if your readers don’t share certain beliefs, values, or knowledge, you can’t guarantee that they will just go along with the assumptions you make. In these situations, it can be valuable to clearly account for some of your assumptions within your paper and maybe even rationalize them by providing additional evidence. For example, if Thompson were writing his article for an audience skeptical that technology will continue advancing, he might choose to identify openly why he is convinced that humanity’s progression towards more complex innovation won’t stop.

4. Revise with your audience in mind.

We touched on this in the previous recommendation, but it’s important enough to expand on it further. Just as you should think about what your readers know, believe, and value as you consider the kinds of assumptions you make in your argument, you should also think about your audience in relationship to the kind of evidence you use. Given who will read your paper, what kind of argumentative support will they find to be the most persuasive? Are these readers who are compelled by numbers and data? Would they be interested by a personal narrative? Would they expect you to draw from certain key scholars in their field or avoid popular press sources or only look to scholarship that has been published in the past ten years? Return to your argument and think about how your readers might respond to it and its supporting evidence.

5. Be your own most critical reader.

Sometimes writing handbooks call this being the devil’s advocate. It is about intentionally pushing against your own ideas. Reread your draft while embracing a skeptical attitude. Ask questions like, “Is that really true?” and, “Where’s the proof?” Be as hard on your argument as you can be, and then let your criticisms inform what you need to expand on, clarify, and eliminate.

This kind of reading can also help you think about how you might incorporate or strengthen a counter–argument. By focusing on possible criticisms to your argument, you might encounter some that are particularly compelling that you’ll need to include in your paper. Sometimes the best way to revise with criticism in mind is to face that criticism head on, fairly explain what it is and why it’s important to consider, and then rationalize why your argument still holds even in light of this other perspective.

6. Look for dissonance.

In her influential 1980 article about how expert and novice writers revise differently, writing studies scholar Nancy Sommers claims that “at the heart of revision is the process by which writers recognize and resolve the dissonance they sense in their writing” (385). In this case, dissonance can be understood as the tension that exists between what you want your text to be, do, or sound like and what is actually on the page. One strategy for re–seeing your argument is to seek out the places where you feel dissonance within your argument—that is, substantive differences between what, in your mind, you want to be arguing, and what is actually in your draft.

A key to strengthening a paper through considering dissonance is to look critically—really critically—at your draft. Read through your paper with an eye towards content, assertions, or logical leaps that you feel uncertain about, that make you squirm a little bit, or that just don’t line up as nicely as you’d like. Some possible sources of dissonance might include:

• logical steps that are missing
• questions a skeptical reader might raise that are left unanswered
• examples that don’t actually connect to what you’re arguing
• pieces of evidence that contradict each other
• sources you read but aren’t mentioning because they disagree with you

Once you’ve identified dissonance within your paper, you have to decide what to do with it. Sometimes it’s tempting to take the easy way out and just delete the idea, claim, or section that is generating this sense of dissonance—to remove what seems to be causing the trouble. But don’t limit yourself to what is easy. Perhaps you need to add material or qualify something to make your argumentative claim more nuanced or more contextualized.

Even if the dissonance isn’t easily resolved, it’s still important to recognize. In fact, sometimes you can factor that recognition into how you revise; maybe your revision can involve considering how certain concepts or ideas don’t easily fit but are still important in some way. Maybe your revision can involve openly acknowledging and justifying the dissonance.

Sommers claims that whether expert writers are substituting, adding, deleting, or reordering material in response to dissonance, what they are really doing is locating and creating new meaning. Let your recognition of dissonance within your argument lead you through a process of discovery.

7. Try “provocative revision.”

Composition and writing center scholar Toby Fulwiler wrote in 1992 about the benefits of what he calls “provocative revision.” He says this kind of revision can take four forms. As you think about revising your argument, consider adopting one of these four strategies.

a. Limiting

As Fulwiler writes, “Generalization is death to good writing. Limiting is the cure for generality” (191). Generalization often takes the form of sweeping introduction statements (e.g., “Since the beginning of time, development has struggled against destruction.”), but arguments can be too general as well. Look back at your paper and ask yourself, “Is my argument ever not grounded in specifics? Is my evidence connected to a particular time, place, community, and circumstance?” If your claims are too broad, you may need to limit your scope and zoom in to the particular.

Inserting new content is a particularly common revision strategy. But when your focus is on revising an argument, make sure your addition of another source, another example, a more detailed description, or a closer analysis is in direct service to strengthening the argument. Adding material may be one way to respond to dissonance. It also can be useful for offering clarifications or for making previously implicit assumptions explicit. But adding isn’t just a matter of dropping new content into a paragraph. Adding something new in one place will probably influence other parts of the paper, so be prepared to make other additions to seamlessly weave together your new ideas.

c. Switching

For Fulwiler, switching is about radically altering the voice or tone of a text—changing from the first–person perspective to a third–person perspective or switching from an earnest appeal to a sarcastic critique. When it comes to revising your argument, it might not make sense to make any of these switches, but imaging what your argument might sound like coming from a very different voice might be generative. For example, how would Thompson’s “A World Without Work,” be altered if it was written from the voice and perspective of an unemployed steel mill worker or someone running for public office in Ohio or a mechanical robotics engineer? Re–visioning how your argument might come across if the primary voice, tone, and perspective was switched might help you think about how someone disinclined to agree with your ideas might approach your text and open additional avenues for revision.

d. Transforming

According to Fulwiler, transformation is about altering the genre and/or modality of a text—revising an expository essay into a letter to the editor, turning a persuasive research paper into a ballad. If you’re writing in response to a specific assignment, you may not have the chance to transform your argument in this way. But, as with switching, even reflecting on the possibilities of a genre or modality transformation can be useful in helping you think differently about your argument. If Thompson has been writing a commencement address instead of an article, how would “A World Without Work” need to change? How would he need to alter his focus and approach if it was a policy paper or a short documentary? Imagining your argument in a completely different context can help you to rethink how you are presenting your argument and engaging with your audience.

8. Ask others to look critically at your argument.

Sometimes the best thing you can do to figure out how your argument could improve is to get a second opinion. Of course, if you are a currently enrolled student at UW–Madison, you are welcome to make an appointment to talk with a tutor at our main center or stop by one of our satellite locations. But you have other ways to access quality feedback from other readers. You may want to ask someone else in your class, a roommate, or a friend to read through your paper with an eye towards how the argument could be improved. Be sure to provide your reader with specific questions to guide his or her attention towards specific parts of your argument (e.g., “How convincing do you find the connection I make between the claims on page 3 and the evidence on page 4?” “What would clarify further the causal relationship I’m suggesting between the first and second sub-argument?”). Be ready to listen graciously and critically to any recommendations these readers provide.

Works Cited

Fulwiler, Toby. “Provocative Revision.” Writing Center Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, 1992, pp. 190-204.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings, 8th ed., Longman, 2010.

Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 31, no. 4, 1980, pp. 378-88.

Thompson, Derek. “A World Without Work.” The Atlantic, July/August 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/. Accessed 11 July 2017.

Toulmin, Stephen. The Uses of Argument. Updated ed., Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Writing Process and Structure

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Getting Started with Your Paper

Interpreting Writing Assignments from Your Courses

Generating Ideas for Your Paper

Creating an Argument

Thesis vs. Purpose Statements

Developing a Thesis Statement

Architecture of Arguments

Working with Sources

Quoting and Paraphrasing Sources

Using Literary Quotations

Citing Sources in Your Paper

Drafting Your Paper

Introductions

Paragraphing

Developing Strategic Transitions

Conclusions

Revising Your Paper

Peer Reviews

Reverse Outlines

Revision Strategies for Longer Projects

Finishing Your Paper

Twelve Common Errors: An Editing Checklist

How to Proofread your Paper

Writing Collaboratively

Collaborative and Group Writing

• Essay Guides
• Basics of Essay Writing

How to Revise an Essay: 4 Simple Steps

• Speech Topics
• Essay Topics
• Other Essays
• Main Academic Essays
• Research Paper Topics
• Basics of Research Paper Writing
• Miscellaneous
• Chicago/ Turabian
• Data & Statistics
• Methodology
• Admission Writing Tips
• Admission Advice
• Other Guides
• Student Life
• Studying Tips
• Understanding Plagiarism
• Academic Writing Tips
• Basics of Dissertation & Thesis Writing

• Research Paper Guides
• Formatting Guides
• Basics of Research Process
• Admission Guides
• Dissertation & Thesis Guides

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Essay revision  involves reviewing and making changes to an essay in order to improve its content, structure and clarity. It is a critical step in the writing process that allows you to refine your ideas and strengthen your arguments. By revising your essay you can ensure that your piece communicates your intended message.

It’s pretty clear that essay revision is a complex process that may take as much time as you spend on the creation of the initial, rough draft version. After all, there are not many geniuses among us who can write perfectly right away. While rereading your draft the next day, you start doubting the formulation of your topic, essay structure, use of quotes, and so on. Sounds familiar? If yes, then scroll down and get an insight about boosting your writing skills from our essay writers .

No worries because you can always visit our academic writing service and ask to write my college essay . Regardless of the complexity or topic of your essay, we’ll provide only high-quality material. We also guarantee a personal approach and timely delivery of work so you’ll have no choice but to be satisfied.

Daniel Howard is an Essay Writing guru. He helps students create essays that will strike a chord with the readers.

Before answering how to revise an essay, you should understand what revising, editing, and proofreading are. Since even experienced college essay writers often confuse these concepts, we decided to explain their main differences as concisely as possible.

NB : support of automatic verification software is good, but it will never replace human text checking.

You must have a list of key questions you can use during essay revision. There are dozens of them, and it’s easy to get confused. But don’t worry – below, you can find the key questions our college paper writing service has prepared especially for you.

Now, when you know about revision process steps and how it is different from proofreading or editing, it's time to go directly to the point. When you write an essay, you should consider 4 basic rules, namely:

Keep reading to learn more or buy an essay or order editing from professionals.

When you revise essay, this step is always the same, regardless of your work’s style or subject. It also doesn’t matter if your revision is aimed at moving readers to a certain conclusion, providing a description of some research results, or describing technological processes.  You should be 100% sure that your main purpose is achieved. In what way can it be done? Just put yourself in the reader's place and try to outline your main idea in a few sentences.  You should double-check an assignment sheet and feedback (if there is any) to make sure you have addressed each point of instruction. Also, you should bear out that all essay tasks are completed.

At this stage, you should perform your essay’s structure evaluation and make a paragraph revision. Check how logical all arguments are and how they are distributed from the introduction to conclusions. Pay attention to how easy-to-read your material is since it directly impacts your essay’s overall impression. Don’t use phrases with similar meanings, and better replace them with transition sentences for improving the structure of an essay . At this stage, many underestimate the importance of intuition. If you read the sentence and feel that it’s out of context, then it probably is.

At this step, you continue revising a paragraph, paying attention to the references, use of quotes, etc. Your text may be ideally written in terms of content and contain reliable scientific data. But if you don’t bother paying attention to formatting errors or going over the allowed word limit, your entire essay may suffer. Here, you should carefully examine points from a document that regulates formatting rules and always follow them. Please, focus on eliminating the following incorrections:

This is the last step of the revision essay, aimed at polishing your text and making it coherent. Each paragraph and section of your essay should be relevant and make sense. Check how clearly all your arguments are described, whether they contain semantic mistakes, if they come with adequate quoting, etc. As a result, your readers can smoothly move from the beginning to the end without a pause. They don’t need to stop in order to put together essay sections like separate pieces of a puzzle.

Below, you’ll find info on the most useful tips to help you smoothly revise in a sentence. We prepared only universal tips for essays on any topic. Another peculiarity is that they’re not related to writing itself.  You’ve surely heard about some of these tips or even used them in practice but haven’t paid attention to others. Just a few minutes of reading will help you become fluent in content polishing techniques, so feel free and keep scrolling.

When you revise paper works, read them out loud, especially if they’re long. When you work with a large document, your brain quickly gets tired and switches to energy-saving mode. In this case, you may not pay attention to some incorrect wording in one of your paragraphs. Probably, you may skip even the whole line and not notice that at all. In addition, this technique helps to check your text again for grammatical or spelling errors.

While revising a paper, try not to do everything in one day, especially if you deal with a large text or have tough deadlines.  In this case, it’s important to plan the work in such a way that you have one day left exclusively for revision. Keep in mind that morning is the best time for revision. You can focus on revising with a fresh mind and once again check how relevant your work is.

Going through tips on how to revise a paper, keep in mind that sometimes it’s teamwork. If you’re an essay creator, then you can hardly be a judge of your work at the same time.  In fact, many shortcomings obvious for another reader will be blurred in your head. So find a third party, let them read your text, and then explain what the main purpose of your work is. Readers should understand it and decide whether it has been achieved or not.

During revising essays, the use of unique content is a must. Plagiarism is unacceptable, regardless of your essay’s topic or style you used during writing.  Currently, there are a lot of appropriate applications that provide a necessary level and depth of your paper check. Before checking, you should once again read all conditions for submitting your essay. As a rule, they provide information regarding the acceptable level of quoting which should not be exceeded.

Summing up, we can say that this article contains an exhaustive answer for writers wondering how to revise essay. We’ve described the basic nuances about how to structure and organize your essay. Now, you also know how you can form a purpose and check how clear it is. We hope that reading the list of questions will help you master revision skills. Using information from our tips, you can go through 4 revising steps seamlessly and without a headache.

• Revisions can help you get the bigger picture and put yourself in the shoes of your essay’s reader. Here, you should evaluate:
• sections on compliance with your general topic and logical links between them;
• quotes, facts, statistics, data relevance, and so on.
• Editing implies only working on single sentences and parts of a body paragraph . You need to ensure clarity and consistency of your narration and remove phrases that do not make sense.
• Essay proofreading means that you work with single words and phrases. Here, your main task is to eliminate punctuation, spelling, and grammatical errors.
• Is the word choice clear and easy-to-understand?
• Does each sentence correspond to style requirements?
• How relevant is the data provided?
• Does your text contain an understandable thesis?
• Is your essay well-structured?
• Do all sections of your essay come with logical transitions?
• Do sentences contain grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors ?
• How can one cut the essay volume and make it more concise?
• How unique is your text?
• always reach your essay’s main ideas that you set at the very beginning;
• create your essay’s outline sequentially and without logical gaps;
• use only the language corresponding to your essay’s style;
• focus on reliable data that can be checked and confirmed.
• Font size and font style
• Confusing structure
• Improper layout formatting.

The Differences Between Revising, Editing and Proofreading an Essay 

Important questions to ask yourself when revising an essay, 4 steps of essay revising, step 1: look at the purpose of your essay, step 2: check the structure and organisation, step 3: pay attention to structure and formatting, step 4: focus on coherence and content, how to revise an essay: extra tips, 1. read an essay out loud, 2. give it a time, 3. get feedback from another reader, 4. check for plagiarism, how to revise an essay: key takeaways.

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Take a Second Look: Effective Strategies for Essay Revision in College

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Writing an excellent essay for college can be an overwhelming task — it needs to be flawless, interesting , and engaging, should include credible examples, and be devoid of grammatical errors.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it?

Well, it is, and the only way to make your efforts count is by revising your essay before submitting it.

Revising, proofreading, and editing can be a big task if you don’t know how to go about it. You need to ensure that you understand how to revise an essay in college and follow the proper process for a smooth-sailing revision.

In this article, you’ll learn how to do a thorough revision of your essay to score well.

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How to revise an essay in college: 8 best practices.

Regardless of how good a writer you are, you should always revise your essay before considering it to be completed.

So, don't miss out on this pivotal step, and make the important changes that are required. Let’s take a look at eight essential tips to keep in mind while revising an essay for college.

1. Take a break from the essay

After finishing your first essay draft, keep the paper aside and take time away from it before you start to revise, edit and proofread the essay.

This is important because when you take a break, you will be able to spot errors that you may have missed if you were to immediately start revising your paper after completion.

It is good practice to go for a walk, listen to music, watch a movie, take a nap or do something that would distract your mind after completing your essay. Give your mind a break, and then come back to read the essay from a fresh perspective.

2. Read the essay out loud

Writing an essay leaves you tired. Instead of proofreading it in your mind, why not read it out loud?

This would most probably result in you missing out on errors, mistakes that change the meaning of a phrase, arguments that are illogical or out of place, wordy paragraphs, or any sentence structures that need a bit more clarity and refining.

You can also ask a friend, your peers, or even a family member to read your essay out loud so that you can hear it clearly and spot obvious mistakes.

3. Proofread in parts

The entire process of proofreading and editing the text can be very overwhelming, even more, when you have to proofread long documents. To avoid any confusion or panic, it is advisable to select one paragraph after another and proofread it section-wise.

It is best to take your time and not edit your essay last minute or in a hurry, as this could cause a lot of silly mistakes.

Always keep in mind to edit your essay before you proofread it because when you proofread, you will be required to make any necessary edits or changes to your draft.

Proofreading before editing can be counterproductive and would only further waste your time.

4. Ensure your essay has a logical flow

Once your ideas and points have been added, think about the order of your essay and how you would want to present it.

To write a quality essay, you need to ensure to have an interesting introduction paragraph with a catchy thesis statement, thorough, free-flowing body paragraphs with examples, statistics, and facts to support your argument for the paper, and a clear conclusion paragraph that summarizes the entire purpose of the essay.

Check for the addition of transition words for a smoother and more logical flow of concepts and ideas. The length of the assignment should be concise and clear, as well as make sure to not use slang or overly complicated words. Instead, use simple terms for easy understanding.

5. Ask for feedback

Ask your family members or peers to read your essay and give you honest feedback on it. Consider asking questions like:

• What do they understand from the essay?
• Were the arguments clearly stated?
• Did they like the essay or not? Why?
• What portion of the essay did they find most compelling?
• Was there a phrase or sentence that stood out to them?
• If they could make any changes, what changes would they make?
• What do they think the essay says about you?
• Has the essay impacted or influenced them in any way? If yes, then how?
• Was there anything missing from the content of the essay?

This feedback is valuable and necessary for you to enhance the quality and readability of your essay. Your peers can offer you guidance, advice, and suggestions that you can choose to take if you think they will help your paper.

Try not to be defensive about your essay, and make sure you only make a few people read your essay. Bringing multiple people in to read your paper will confuse you, and you might miss out on a few important recommendations.

6. Fix grammar and spellings

The most common mistakes made while writing any kind of essay are grammatical errors and silly spelling mistakes. Your essay may have all the information and might be absolutely perfect, but your grades can slip drastically if your professors find multiple grammar and spelling errors throughout your essay’s content.

Having these mistakes shows that you may not have worked too hard to revise or use a spell checker on your essay. Always take note of the feedback given to you by your peers about these kinds of mistakes.

You can also run your document through the online grammar checker, as it is a free tool available to check, identify and provide helpful feedback regarding grammar, sentence structure, spelling mistakes, and even the clarity or engagement of your entire essay.

7. Review your sources

Take note of utilizing credible and authentic primary and secondary sources for your essay. Avoid using information sources like Wikipedia, and browse through research papers, online sources, academic essays, and newspaper reports as your reference sources.

It is also very important to properly cite your sources in your essay, and mention them in the bibliography because if you neglect or miss out on citing your sources, your essay would be considered to be plagiarised.

After completing your essay, review your sources to see if all of them are included and also match the information present in your essay. Check to see if the source has been credited to the essay’s content.

8. Check for plagiarism

Plagiarism is a serious offense in all academic institutions. If your content is not cited with credible sources, it would be considered to be unoriginal and copied.

Every institution requires originality and unique ideas from their students, and if caught plagiarising, your essay can be dismissed completely, resulting in a failing grade for that assignment.

You can also be banned from giving further assignments or tests if you’ve been caught plagiarised work multiple times.

There are also multiple plagiarism-checking websites online, and you could use them for a quick screening of your paper to check for any uncited sources. Some of them include the following:

• DupliChecker

This will save you from literary theft that colleges deem as unbearable and will deliver a well-scanned, original, and quality essay with absolutely zero ideas or phrases that are plagiarised. Some of these websites and tools are free to use but most of them require you to subscribe or download the premium version.

Every student knows how important those “last-minute checks” are just as you’re about to turn your assignment in.

It is truly one of the worst feelings to realize a mistake in your assignment after you have already submitted it, so to not go through that again -- revise, revise and revise again! That little more effort and time may take your project to a whole new level, a level you’ve been aspiring for but just missing out on.

So take that time out, put in that extra effort, and use those last essential minutes of your deadline in a way you won’t regret. Revise and make your essay as good as it can get using these important tips on revising an essay in college.

One of the best parts about working with Writers Per Hour's paper editors is that our writers do multiple revisions before they submit the essay to meet your requirements and deadline. So, you can be sure to receive high-quality papers that are original and free of errors.

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How to Revise an Argumentative Essay: The Complete Guide

by  Antony W

April 7, 2022

You’ve spent a lot of time working on your argumentative essay. Your  argument’s title  is on point, you have a strong  introduction for the argument , with a powerful  hook  that easily grabs the reader’s attention, and an  arguable thesis statement .

Throughout the body section, you’ve structured your assignment so that every paragraph addresses its own idea, beginning with a topic sentence and ending with a closing link that transition to the next consecutive paragraph.

Your essay even  addresses the opposing point of views  and ends with a very strong  conclusion . Your essay has addressed the issue in the prompt, and you now feel confident enough to submit it for review.

However, there’s one more thing you need to do before you can have your instructor look at your paper. You have to revise the essay thoroughly. So in this guide, you’ll learn  how to revise an argumentative essay  to give it a more refined touch than what it already has.

How to Revise An Argumentative Essay

Take a break from writing.

While you can do everything in one sitting, it’s not always the best thing to do if you want to earn full marks.

Take a break from the essay as soon as you finish writing the conclusion. A 24 hour break isn’t bad, although you can relax for a couple of hours if you have a strict deadline to beat.

Taking a break has a benefit: 

It gives you the opportunity to refresh your mind, which could yield some great ideas and arguments different from what you already have in your essay.

In the end, you come back to your paper as a critical thinker who’s ready to read the essay from the standpoint of a reader, not a writer.

When you come back to working on your paper, read the essay carefully word by word, this time from a reader’s perspective.

Use Revise Outline to Review Your Claims and Evidence

In reverse outlining, you take away all the supporting writing and leave your paper with the main ideas. The approach allows you to assess if your ideas features the logical sequence of points and it helps to determine the success of your paper.

Reverse  outlining your argumentative essay  allow you to:

• See if your paper meets its goals
• Find places to analyze or expand
• Look for gaps in your structure where readers may otherwise find your organization somehow weak

To reverse outline your argumentative essay, take a separate blank piece of paper and start organizing your thoughts.

• Write your main claim at the top, or simply the thesis statement, right at the top
• Follow this with all the sub claims that you made in your paper
• Write down all the evidences that you used to support each claim

Since reverse outlining allows you to detail the core elements of your arguments in the most basic form possible, it becomes easy to see whether your argument would be convincing without the supporting writing.

Again, you’re able to look at your evidence more critically to determine if they’re sufficient to support the most crucial elements in the essay.

This revision technique raises a few important questions that you can use to refine your argumentative essay:

• Does your argument provide sufficient evidence to support your claim?
• How well has the essay addressed the  counterarguments  presented?
• Do you need to qualify any of your claims to make it more precise?

Look Into the Assumptions of Your Arguments

As you  write your argumentative essay , you’ll find yourself making implicit and explicit assumptions to connect your audience to your claims. Should this the case, you should read your argumentative essay to identify the assumptions you make about a piece of evidence. Then, ask yourself the following questions:

• Are the assumptions that I have made on a claim in my argumentative essay reasonable?
• Can my readers acknowledge the assumptions that I make in my argumentative writing?
• Should I leave the assumptions in my argumentative essay if my target audience doesn’t acknowledge them?

It’s uncertain if readers will openly recognize and share your assumptions, and especially if they don’t accept certain knowledge, value or beliefs.

So if you’ve explicitly or implicitly made assumptions in your work, account for them and, if possible, provide more evidence to validate these assumptions.

Revise Your Argumentative Essay with Your Audience in Mind

It’s important to think about your audience when revising your paper, and especially in relation to the evidence you use in your argumentative essay.

Since  you already know who will be reading your paper anyway, you need to identify the kind of evidence that they’ll find more persuasive.

• Do they need numbers and statistics?
• Are they looking for evidence draw from certain scholars in the field you’re trying to explore?
• Or will the essay be more convincing if it included personal narratives?

It’s going to take some time to figure out how exactly your readers may respond to your arguments.

And that can go a long way to make it easy for you to include the right supporting evidence in your work.

Let Someone Else Read Your Argumentative Essay

Sometimes playing the  devil’s advocate  in an argumentative essay that you’ve written yourself can be somewhat hard.

Should that be the case, it’s best to find someone more objective to read your paper.

This kind of approach is helpful because it helps you think about how you may handle opposing point of views when they arise.

Quite too often, another objective reader will certainly embrace a more skeptical attitude and will help you identify gaps that can help you improve your writing.

In this situation, questions such as truth and the burden of proof will easily arise. Allowing them to be hard on your arguments can give you helpful criticism, which you can use to either expand, clarify, or remove an issue from your argument.

About the author 

Antony W is a professional writer and coach at Help for Assessment. He spends countless hours every day researching and writing great content filled with expert advice on how to write engaging essays, research papers, and assignments.

November 7, 2023

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Edit and revise your essays with Artificial Intelligence

Once you’ve written the first draft of an essay, it’s time to look over your work and edit it. While proofreading and editing can be time-consuming and tedious, they’re a cinch with the right tools. Learn how to polish your writing using the many AI-powered tools built right into your Microsoft Edge  browser.

Real-time editing with built-in Editor

Editor  is an online AI text editor built directly into your Microsoft Edge browser . When you’re typing in the Bing search box, in the Edge sidebar, or on any webpage that doesn’t have its own internal editing software, Editor will offer you spelling, sentence autocompletion, and grammar suggestions in real time.

Editor helps you find what you need in searches more quickly by correcting spelling and autocompleting words, phrases, and sentences, which can speed up writing and revising. You can also use it as a quick spelling and grammar checker by pasting any text into the Bing search box.

Whether you’re looking up a new source, fact checking, or testing the strength of a phrase, Editor will automatically correct common errors and offer grammatical suggestions on the fly.

Polish your writing with Copilot in Edge

AI-powered Copilot in Edge can be a lifesaver when it’s time to polish an essay. Here are ways each tool can support you as you edit and revise your essay:

Research and formatting help in Copilot

Ask Copilot to help with several essay-finalizing steps, from formatting citations in a specific style to explaining concepts quickly so you can represent them more fully in your final revision. Copilot is designed to chat with you, so go ahead and have a conversation. Ask if it has any more ideas to help with your topic, or how to back up an argument more strongly, and you’ll find that you have your very own in-browser AI research assistant.

Rewrites and clarity checks in Copilot

Copilot can provide rewrites of any sentences or sections of your essay that aren’t working as well as they could. You might think of it as a playful tutor eager to show you different ways to approach a topic (in various forms, styles, and tones) so you can land on your own way. You can also ask Compose in Copilot to phrase one of your sentences or sections differently to see if your meaning is coming through clearly.

Take advantage of Microsoft 365 integration in Microsoft Edge

Wield the full power of Microsoft Word  (and other Microsoft 365 apps) ¹ right in your Microsoft Edge browser. Follow these steps to open a document using the Microsoft Edge sidebar and access the advanced AI-powered Editor functions available in Word:

• In the Microsoft Edge sidebar on the right, select the Microsoft 365 icon to open the Microsoft 365 pane.
• Select the Word ² icon.
• Create a new document or scroll down to open an existing or recent document.
• The document will open as a webpage in your browser window. 
• Use Copilot in Edge to assist as you revise your essay.

When it comes to ways AI can help you improve your writing and other tasks, this is just the start! Try Microsoft Edge today  and see how its AI-powered tools can help you compose an email , plan a family dinner, summarize complex articles , or organize a trip. As your AI-powered assistant for the web, the possibilities are endless.

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Insights Weekly Essay Challenges 2024 – Week 173 – A Business That Makes Nothing More Than Money Is Poor Business.

Insights weekly essay challenges 2024 – week 173.

30 March 2024

Write an essay on the following topic in not more than 1000-1200 words:

“A Business That Makes Nothing More Than Money Is Poor Business.”

Essay synopsis.

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