Essay Revision

This worksheet should help you to understand what I mean when I talk about the importance of revising your paper.  By revision, I mean a conceptual as well as structural activity that forces you to backtrack constantly as you change your meaning and refine your intention.  I use the word to refer to the writing begun immediately after the formulation of a trial thesis—following brainstorming and/or outlining—the writing that continues as you move from a loosely constructed first draft to the final polished and typed essay.  I reserve the word “editing” for the final “tidying up” of your prose, your typing, your spelling.  Revision, then, implies that you discover your subject by writing about it; no words are final, absolute, not to be changed. Words, sentences, and paragraphs are flexible parts to be considered, interchanged, developed, sometimes cut out altogether, and endlessly modified.

You can use the following worksheet as a model, adapting it to your own concerns, to your own strengths and weaknesses as a writer. We’ll be working with other, more specific revision sheets during the semester, but these questions will be useful to you as you move through the writing process with each assignment. You should plan on writing at least two complete drafts for each major essay.

I. After the first draft:

1.        Ask yourself if you understand the assignment and have followed its instructions

2.        Does your working thesis address the assignment, and does each working passage/paragraph develop that thesis; reformulate the thesis statement if necessary

3.        Emphasize cutting—keep writing until you have enough material to cut

4.        Cut pieces that present unnecessary or unrelated material

5.        Mark your good passages with a check; try to determine what other passages lack

6.        Put the passages in some kind of order reflecting a provisional pattern of organization: what do readers need to know and in what order

II. During the intermediate drafts:

1.        Try reading your draft aloud to “hear” the writing from a reader’s point of view

2.        Ask yourself if you are saying what you mean.  Do your sentences convey what you are thinking? If not, keep writing and cutting until you get there

3.        Consider your paragraphs:

·         Do they develop your thesis?  Check your topic sentences here

·         Are they fully developed with pertinent evidence?

·         Are there any unsupported (or unsupportable) generalizations?

·         Have you made transitions between paragraphs?

4.        Ask yourself if you have come directly to your point:

·         Circle prepositions and revise sentences that pile on too many prepositional phrases

·         Circle “to be” forms and substitute precise, active verbs

·         Circle passive constructions and shift to active voice

·         Combine and subordinate choppy sentences

5.        Correct punctuation and spelling errors

6.        Consider your conclusion—are you actually concluding something, or merely summing up what’s come before

III. Editing the final draft

Editing is the process of fine-tuning your writing. In editing, you turn your attention to sentence-level matters of word choice, tone, economy, and precision. Think about the following questions as you edit your near-final draft.

1.        Do you use active verbs wherever possible? (Do you “decide” rather than “make a decision”?)

2.        Have you cut all the dead wood from your sentences? (“It is interesting to note that editing is easy.”)

3.        Do you have good reason for using passive constructions? If not, make them active. (“The liquid was poured into the test tube by the chemist.”)

4.        Can you use a smaller word where you have used a big one? (“Can you utilize this worksheet?”)

5.        Have you used the most precise word or term that you can? (Will your audience understand it?)

6.        Do you find any clichés in your sentences? (“Can you cut through the red tape and get on the ball?”)

7.        Can you combine any sentences to avoid repetition? (“The water is brown. It is flowing fast. It is polluted.”)

8.        Are your references and documentation complete and clearly presented?

9.        Have you checked your paper for errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar?