Revision Recommendations

"Have more than thou showest, / Speak less than thou knowest." ~William Shakespeare

Now that you have completed the initial draft of your paper, you are ready to begin to revise it. We suggest that you take a few days, or hours if you are pinched for time, away from your paper before you begin to revise it. Then return to your paper with a clear mind and begin your revision process. You may also ask a friend, professor, or Writing Center tutor to read your initial draft and make comments about it to direct you in your revisions and editing. Below are a few suggestions for revision:

Have a hard copy of your paper.
It is easier for the eye to pick out editing concerns when your copy is in paper form.

Read aloud.
Reading your paper aloud to yourself helps you to hear the sentence level concerns of your paper as well as the concerns regarding the flow of your prose and your argument.

Re-think your thesis.
Doing this will help to ensure that you are confident in your thesis and your arguments supporting it.

Concentrate on ideas before sentences and mechanics. It is more important to your professor that you have clear thesis and sufficient supporting evidence than for you to have clear prose. It is, therefore, more worthwhile to concentrate on the ideas of your paper in your first step of revision and then focus on grammar and sentence level concerns later.

Be concise.
Eliminate clutter, which open appears in the form of prepositional phrases, but also watch out for the senseless and the redundant moments. Beware of pairs of words which create a nice rhythm to your prose but say the same thing: "With careless nonchalance, she threw the bag over her shoulder." Clearly, either "carelessly" or "nonchalantly" will serve our purposes, but we don’t need both. Also, expletives (there are, it is) often launch weak sentences: "There are many people who find success intimidating." We can more clearly say: "Success intimidates many people."

(Adapted from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Writing Center Handout "Five Editing Principles).

Answer these 10 questions

1. Does my paper meet the requirements of the assignment?
    
2. Have I thought about my purpose as a writer and my relationship to the audience?
    
3. Have I identified the question, issue, or problem to which my paper responds?
    
4. Do I have a thesis--a main claim or principal assertion--that is stated precisely and fully?
    
5. Do I have an introduction that establishes for readers the subject, my purpose in writing, and a general sense of how my paper will be developed?
    
6. Are my ideas developed through a series of clearly and logically related points?
    
7. Are all major points fully reasoned and supported with evidence?
    
8. Do I have a conclusion that relates naturally to my paper and gives an effective sense of ending or "closure"?
    
9. Does my text "flow"? Is there anything that will distract readers in my crafting of sentences or choice of words?
    
10. Does my paper have an appropriate and effective title?

(Adapted from the Trinity College Writing Center handout "Revising and Editing Questions")