Revising and Editing

Revising

Revision is known as rethinking and rewriting sections of a paper. This step in the research paper process is best done several days after your rough draft has been written and you have received feedback from someone who has read your paper. The time away from a piece of writing gives you a chance to think more objectively about the purpose, audience, and format of the paper. When you are ready to revise your paper, consider the comments and suggestions from your instructor and peer reviewer. Then, begin making the changes to your paper to strengthen your argument, clarify parts that may have been vague or confusing to your reader, or improve the flow of your ideas.

Consider revising your paper from your audience's point of view. In fact, to revise means literally to re-see your writing. When you revise, you are looking to ensure each part of your paper works with the other parts to make a coherent whole. You may need to change the order of your information, expand on certain sections, or cut details in others. Often, you will need to go back to the drafting stage and re-work parts of your paper. Your instructor and peer reviewer have offered you meaningful feedback, but the decision is ultimately yours whether you will incorporate each revision and how you will go about accomplishing it successfully to enhance your paper.

Editing

While revising focuses mainly on making your content clear to your reader, editing focuses on making your document meet the conventions of standard written English and on formatting the paper to a particular style, such as the Modern Language Association (MLA) style. During the editing stage, check the following:

While the spell-check and grammar-check features of your software program can be helpful in identifying errors, they are not foolproof. For example, spell-check tools will not catch mistakes where you have used the wrong word. Grammar-check tools may help identify fragments and run-ons, but sometimes the corrections they recommend are wrong or they may not notice a mistake. Take the time to critically review your paper. It helps to read it aloud, slowly, even to someone else. Through this technique, you not only will catch your own mistakes, but the other person may comment on something that does not sound quite right.

Once you can read your paper from start to finish twice without finding any more errors, print a hard copy of your paper and read it over once more. Reading a hard copy of your paper gives your eyes a chance to refresh and spot additional errors that you may have missed while proofreading the document on your computer screen.

The more you practice revising and editing your written work, the more confident and efficient you will become in this skill. Experienced writers know what to look for when revising and editing a piece of writing, so take a moment now to familiarize yourself with some of the common pitfalls you should be looking for as you polish your persuasive paper. In this interactivity, click on each of the segments to see what questions writers typically ask themselves when they revise a rough draft. Use these questions to help you revise and edit your own work. Click on the player button to begin.

View a printable version of the interactivity.

 

Revising and Editing Review

Now that you have explored ways to revise and edit the rough draft of your persuasive research paper, review your knowledge in this non-graded activity. Read each description of the redaction process and select whether the action involves revising or editing. Click on the player button to get started.