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Revising

Assessing the Elements » Enriching the Argument » Editing and Proofreading

Revision is one of the most important and difficult tasks for any writer. It’s a crucial stage in the writing process, yet one that is all too easy to ignore or mismanage. The difference between a so-so essay and a good one, between a good essay and a great one, often depends entirely on effective revision. Give yourself time to revise and develop revision strategies that work for you; the investment in time and effort will pay rich dividends.

Ideally, the process of revision should involve three distinct tasks: assessing the elements, improving the argument, and editing and proofreading. Each of these may require a separate draft. Before considering those three tasks, however, you should be aware of the following three general tips.

First, effective revision requires you to temporarily play the role of reader, as well as writer, of your essay. Take a step back from your draft, doing your utmost to look at it from a more objective point of view. Revision demands re-vision— looking again, seeing anew. As a result, this is an especially good time to involve other people. Have a classmate or friend read and critique your draft.

Second, at this stage it helps to think less in absolute terms (right and wrong, good and bad) than in terms of strengths and weaknesses (elements and aspects of the draft that work well and those that can be improved through revision). If you can understand what’s making your essay work as well as what’s detracting from it, then you’re better able to improve it. Don’t get distracted from this important work by grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, or other minutiae; there will be time to correct them later.

Third, learn to take full advantage of all the capabilities of the computer, but also recognize its limitations. Cutting and pasting make experimenting with different organizational strategies a breeze; word-processing programs identify problems with grammar, spelling, and syntax; the search function can locate repetitive or problematic wording; and so on. You should familiarize yourself with, and use, all of the tools your computer provides and be thankful that you barely know the meaning of the word white-out. But you should also remember that the computer is just a tool with limits and that you must be its master. Like any tool, it can create new problems in the process of solving old ones. When it comes to grammar, syntax, and spelling, for instance, you should always pay attention to your pro-gram’s queries and suggestions. But if you let it make all the decisions, you may end up with an essay full of malapropisms at once hilarious and tragic (one student essay consistently referred to human beings as human beans!) or of sentences that are all exactly the same size and shape—all perfectly correct, and all perfectly boring. Also, because the computer makes cutting and pasting so easy and only shows an essay one screen at a time, it’s much easier to reorganize but much harder to recognize the effects of doing so. During revision, then, you should at times move away from the computer screen. Print out a hard copy periodically so that you can assess your essay as a whole, identifying problems that you can return to the computer to fix.

Assessing the Elements

The first step in revision is to make sure that all the elements or working parts of the essay are indeed working. To help with that process, run through the following checklist in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your draft. Try to answer each question honestly.

Thesis

• Is there one claim that effectively controls the essay?
  
  
• Is the claim debatable?
  
  
• Does the claim demonstrate real thought? Does it truly illuminate the text and the topic?

Structure

BEGINNING

• Does the introduction establish a clear motive for readers, effectively convincing them that there’s something worth thinking, reading, and writing about here?
  
  
• Does it give readers all (and only) the basic information they need about the text, author, and/or topic?
• Does the introduction clearly state the central claim or thesis? Is it obvious which claim is the thesis?

MIDDLE

• Does each paragraph state one debatable claim? Is the main claim always obvious? Does everything in the paragraph relate to, and help to support and develop, that claim?
  
  
• Is each of those claims clearly related to (but different from) the thesis?
  
  
• Are the claims/paragraphs logically ordered?
  
  
• Is that logic clear? Is each claim clearly linked to those that come before and after? Are there any logical "leaps" that readers might have trouble taking?
  
  
• Does each claim/paragraph clearly build on the last one? Does the argument move forward, or does it seem more like a list or a tour through a museum of interesting observations?
  
  
• Do any key claims or steps in the argument seem to be missing?

ENDING

• Does the conclusion give readers the sense that they’ve gotten somewhere and that the journey has been worthwhile?
  
  
• Does it indicate the implications of the argument, consider relevant evaluative questions, and/or discuss questions that remain unanswered?

Evidence

• Is there ample, appropriate evidence for each claim?
  
  
• Are the appropriateness and significance of each fact—its relevance to the claim—perfectly clear?
  
  
• Are there any weak examples or inferences that aren’t reasonable? Are there moments when readers might ask, "But couldn’t that fact instead mean this?"
  
  
• Is all the evidence considered? What about facts that might complicate or contradict the argument? Are there moments when readers might think, "But what about this other fact?"
  
  
• Is each piece of evidence clearly presented? Do readers have all the contextual information they need to understand a quotation?
  
  
• Is each piece of evidence gracefully presented? Are quotations varied by length and presentation? Are they ever too long? Are there any unnecessary block quotations, or block quotations that require additional analysis? (For more specific explanations and advice on effective quotation, see EFFECTIVE QUOTATION.)

Though you want to pay attention to all of the elements, first drafts often have similar weaknesses. There are three especially common ones:

• Mismatch between thesis and argument or between introduction and body
  Sometimes a first or second draft ends up being a tool for discovering what your thesis really is. As a result, you may find that the thesis of your draft (or your entire introduction) doesn’t fit the argument you’ve ended up making. You thus need to start your revision by reworking the thesis and introduction. Then work your way back through the essay, making sure that each claim or topic sentence fits the new thesis.
  
  
• The list, or "museum tour," structure
  In a draft, writers sometimes present each claim as if it were just an item on a list (First, second, and so on) or as a stop on a tour of ideas (And this is also important ...). But presenting your ideas in this way keeps you and your readers from making logical connections between ideas. It may also prevent your argument from developing. Sometimes it can even be a symptom of the fact that you’ve ceased arguing entirely, falling into mere plot summary or description. Check to see if number-like words or phrases appear prominently at the beginning of your paragraphs or if your paragraphs could be put into a different order without fundamentally changing what you’re saying. At times, solving this problem will require wholesale rethinking and reorganizing. But at other times, you will just need to add or rework topic sentences. Make sure that there’s a clearly stated, debatable claim up-front and in charge of each paragraph and that each claim relates to, but differs from, the thesis.
  
  
• Missing sub-ideas
  You may find that you’ve skipped a logical step in your argument—that the claim you make in, say, body paragraph 3 actually depends on, or makes sense only in light of, a more basic claim that you took for granted in your draft. In that case, you’ll need to create and insert a new paragraph that articulates, supports, and develops this key claim.

Enriching the Argument

Step 1 of the revision process aims to ensure that your essay does the best possible job of making your argument. But revision is also an opportunity to go beyond that—to think about ways in which your overall argument might be made more thorough and complex. In drafting an essay our attention is often and rightly focused on emphatically staking out a particular position and proving its validity. This is the fundamental task of any essay, and you certainly don’t want to do anything at this stage to compromise that. At the same time, you do want to make sure that you haven’t purchased clarity at the cost of oversimplification by, for example, ignoring evidence that might undermine or complicate your claims, alternative interpretations of the evidence you do present, or alternative claims or points of view. Remember, you have a better chance of persuading readers to accept your point of view if you show them that it’s based on a thorough, open-minded exploration of the text and topic. Don’t invent unreasonable or irrelevant complications or counterarguments. Do try to assess your argument objectively and honestly, perhaps testing it against the text one more time. Think like a reader rather than a writer: Are there points where a reasonable reader might object to, or disagree with, the argument? Have you ignored or glossed over any questions or issues that a reasonable reader might expect an essay on this topic to address?

Editing and Proofreading

Once you’ve gotten the overall argument in good shape, it’s time to focus on the small but important stuff—words and sentences. Your prose should not only convey your ideas to your readers but also demonstrate how much you care about your essay. Flawless prose can’t disguise a vapid or illogical argument, but faulty, flabby prose can destroy a potentially persuasive and thoughtful one. Don’t sabotage all your hard work by failing to correct misspelled words, grammatical problems, misquotations, incorrect citations, or typographical errors. Little oversights make all the difference when it comes to clarity and credibility.

Though you will want to check all of the following aspects of your essay, it will probably be easier to spot mistakes and weaknesses if you read through the essay several times, concentrating each time on one specific aspect.

Every writer has individual weaknesses and strengths, and every writer tends to be overly fond of certain phrases and sentence structures. With practice, you will learn to watch out for the kinds of mistakes to which you are most prone. Eventually, you can and should develop your own personalized editing checklist.

Sentences

• Does each one read clearly and crisply?
  
  
• Are they varied in length, structure, and word order?
  
  
• Is my phrasing direct rather than roundabout?

Words

• Have I used any words whose meaning I’m not sure of?
  
  
• Are the idioms used correctly? Is my terminology correct?
  
  
• Do my key words always mean exactly the same thing?
  
  
• Do I ever use a fancy word or phrase where a simpler one might do?
  
  
• Are there any unnecessary words or phrases?
  
  
• Do my metaphors and figures of speech make literal sense?
  
  
• Are my verbs active and precise?
  
  
• Are my pronoun references clear and correct?
  
  
• Do my subjects and verbs always agree?

Mechanics

• Is every quotation correctly worded and punctuated?
  
  
• Is the source of each quotation clearly indicated through parenthetical citation?
  
  
• Have I checked the spelling of words I’m not sure of? (Remember that spell-checks won’t indicate how to spell every word and that they sometimes create mistakes by substituting the wrong word for the misspelled one.)
  
  
• Are my pages numbered?
  
  
• Does the first page of my essay clearly indicate my name (and any other required identifying information), as well as my essay’s title?

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