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How to Revise, Edit and Proofread Your Writing

Whatever sort of writing you do, it’s important to revise and edit your work – especially if you write academic essays, or articles or short stories that you’ll be submitting to editors. However much time you took over the piece on the first draft, you’ll always find a few mistakes to correct.

This is the method that I’ve used for years when writing essays or short stories, to ensure they’re as good as possible before a lecturer or editor gets to see them!

Set your work aside for a period of time – don’t hit ‘Save’ on the first draft then start again straight away on the second pass. You’ll come to the work afresh if you leave it alone for a while.

As Michael said in Write First, Edit Later:

Let your writing sit for a while. It may make more sense if you sleep on it. Or, it may make less sense after you have slept on it. At least you’ll know which.

For essays, try to allow at least a day. Short stories can sometimes need longer – your mind will carry on mulling over the ideas whilst you’re doing other things. And many novelists advise putting your novel aside for at least a month before starting the revision process.

Read over your whole piece quite quickly. Circle any typos and mistakes that you spot, but concentrate on overall flow. If it’s an essay, check for any gaps in logic or any sides of the argument you might have missed. If it’s a short story, do any passages drag – or go too fast?

Print out the first draft, and read through the whole thing, concentrating on the overall flow of the piece. Circle any typos or mistakes that you notice, but focus on the big picture.

• If it’s an essay, are there any logical missteps, points you’ve not backed up, or angles to the argument that you’ve missed?
• If it’s fiction, do any scenes drag or go too fast, and are there any plot holes or inconsistencies of characterisation?

This is the stage to sort out any big problems. I often rewrite the whole thing (especially when working on fiction), starting afresh with a blank document on the computer. If you’re better than me at getting it right first time, you may not need to do that – but you could find yourself cutting out whole paragraphs, adding in new material, and changing the direction of the piece.

After you’ve done this, you might want to ask a friend, classmate or colleague to read the piece. Tell them not to look for tiny errors like typos or clumsy sentences at this stage: ask whether they think it’s broadly OK, or if they have any reservations about the overall direction of the article or story.

Once you’ve sorted out the big picture, you can start fixing any individual sentences and words. Again, it’s a good idea to print out the document and do this on paper: I find I miss errors on screen (especially typos which are valid words, such as “they’re” for “their”).

Look out for:

• Typos and misspellings (a good tip here is to read backwards! You’ll go much more slowly, focussing on every individual word).
• Clumsy sentences and confusing or misleading phrasing (try reading your work aloud).
• Unnecessary words (check for the ones in Five Words You Can Cut).
• Commonly misused or confused words (there’s a whole list of these in the Misused Words category).

If you’re not 100% sure about a spelling, double-check with a dictionary: try Merriam-Webster for clear, succinct definitions. When you can’t quite find the right word, using a thesaurus can help (again, Merriam-Webster is good).

Do you have a great tip for revising and editing your work? Or do you have a horror story about an occasion when you handed in a first draft with a glaring error..? Share your experiences in the comments below!

Copyright by Daily Writing Tips.

How to Revise, Edit and Proofread Your Writing

So, the easiest thing is actually the notepad. You use it as much as you like and only later you scim it and look for gems that might be worth to be published or rewritten. It’s a kind of typewriter. You don’t need any Internet connection. You just type in and enjoy your freedom. After your time of brainstorming or journaling you go and clip out what you’ld like to make public.
I assume that most professional writers work that way. They would in rare cases only directly write into the print. They collect masses of written raw material and do something with it.

Freewriting

When you freewrite, you let your thoughts flow as they will, putting pen to paper and writing down whatever comes into your mind. You don’t judge the quality of what you write and you don’t worry about style or any surface-level issues, like spelling, grammar, or punctuation. If you can’t think of what to say, you write that down—really. The advantage of this technique is that you free up your internal critic and allow yourself to write things you might not write if you were being too self-conscious.

When you freewrite you can set a time limit (“I’ll write for 15 minutes!”) and even use a kitchen timer or alarm clock or you can set a space limit (“I’ll write until I fill four full notebook pages, no matter what tries to interrupt me!”) and just write until you reach that goal. You might do this on the computer or on paper, and you can even try it with your eyes shut or the monitor off, which encourages speed and freedom of thought.

The crucial point is that you keep on writing even if you believe you are saying nothing. Word must follow word, no matter the relevance. Your freewriting might even look like this:

“This paper is supposed to be on the politics of tobacco production but even though I went to all the lectures and read the book I can’t think of what to say and I’ve felt this way for four minutes now and I have 11 minutes left and I wonder if I’ll keep thinking nothing during every minute but I’m not sure if it matters that I am babbling and I don’t know what else to say about this topic and it is rainy today and I never noticed the number of cracks in that wall before and those cracks remind me of the walls in my grandfather’s study and he smoked and he farmed and I wonder why he didn’t farm tobacco…”

When you’re done with your set number of minutes or have reached your page goal, read back over the text. Yes, there will be a lot of filler and unusable thoughts but there also will be little gems, discoveries, and insights. When you find these gems, highlight them or cut and paste them into your draft or onto an “ideas” sheet so you can use them in your paper. Even if you don’t find any diamonds in there, you will have either quieted some of the noisy chaos or greased the writing gears so that you can now face the assigned paper topic. http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/brainstorming.html

As a short debrief of yesterday’s five lectures teaching I must say that I have to prepare myself much better. I need a clear outline for each lecture. The classes went all pretty well, but there were several moments when I floated within the subjects. The fine line between “philosophy” and “beginnings of christianity” got crossed too often.

teacher’s joy

Lenovo ideapad S10

hgeu schedule fall 2008

translators 2nd year “Christian Thinking” (Tue 10:30am)
http://jottit.com/34m72/

Vienna Fac. 1st year “Beginnings of Christianity” (Tue  11:50am)
http://jottit.com/44qne/

Vienna Fac. 1st year “Christian Thinking” (Tue 01:25pm)
http://jottit.com/44qne/

int. business 1st year “Study Skills” (Tue 03:10pm)
http://jottit.com/m8vjw/

int. business 1st year “Beginnings of Christianity” (Tue 04:40pm)
http://jottit.com/m8vjw/

german 1 (Thu)
http://jottit.com/nxvca/

german 2 (Thu)
http://jottit.com/xjefq/

german 3 (Thu)
http://jottit.com/gbx77/

Today school starts again. I’ve got the feeling that I am less prepared than any semester before. And it seems as if the daily challenges grow. Probably this is part of life itself. No establishing, no finding of a place of rest. The Lord knows why. We need to be prepared for heaven. No easy entrance. The gate is narrow, as he said.
A continuous listening to the voice of the Spirit is the ultimate answer.