Revision is the last stage of writing before you hand in your assignment. Revision is your opportunity to examine your draft and make changes to ensure that your ideas are being expressed clearly. This final stage can be divided into three steps: revising, editing, and proofreading.
✓ Ask questions. As you read your draft, ask yourself if there is information that you should add, remove, or move.
✓ Read critically. When you revise your draft, read with a critical eye. What should change in order to ensure your ideas are expressed clearly?
✓ Consider your purpose. Does your writing fit the purpose of the essay?
✓ Consider your audience. Does your writing fit what your audience would expect?
✓ Read loud. You may have an easier time catching a mistake when you hear it spoken.
✓ Start at the end. Working backwards will stop your brain from seeing what it expects, and may help you catch errors.
✓ Check your spelling and grammar thoroughly. They count! Grammarly and spell check software are useful, but don't catch everything.
There are many aspects of writing to consider when revising and essay, such as essay organization, repetition, grammar, and citation style. To ensure an effective review of your draft, make sure you plan time to look the draft over a few times, with a different focus each time. You may consider one or more of the following approaches to help guide your revision: consult past feedback, revision-editing-proofreading, or higher-order & lower-order concerns.
Do not fear the feedback you get on your papers. Feedback can be a key aspect of revising by providing clear indications for what to lookin for in your writing. If you have a lot of comments about clarity, but none on your grammar, then you may want to focus your attention on making sure your ideas are clear. This doesn't mean you don't double check whether you've used the right "their," but it does mean that if you are short on time and need a focus, that focus should go towards the clarity of ideas.
Alongside looking at feedback, or if you don't have much feedback, you can follow the 3-step revision process, revising-editing-proofreading, which is the framework used for this guide. The 3-step revision approach involves:
Revision: Where we focus on the paragraph structure, and the essay as whole
Editing: Where we focus on sentences and grammar
Proofreading: Where we focus on the details, such as following proper citation guidelines
The last strategy for prioritizing during the editing process, is to divide concerns into "Higher-order" and "Lower-order" concerns. Higher-order concerns are similar to "Revise" as mentioned above, In other words, when we look at higher-order concerns, we pay attention to "big picture" issues such as the essay's overall organization, to make sure our ideas are conveyed clearly. Lower-order concerns are more similar to "Edit" and "Proofread" mentioned above. In other words, lower-order concerns include issues like spelling, punctuation, and word choice which can affect the professional tone of an academic piece of writing.
Watch the video below for some introductory ideas on what to watch out for when revising and some strategies you can use.
Higher-Order and Lower-Order Concerns
Use this tip sheet to help you know what to look for during each phase of the revision process.
This checklist is full of questions you might ask yourself while revising.
Use this checklist as a guide when you are editing.
Use this checklist as a guide when you are proofreading.
Use this tip sheet to identify and correct common grammar errors.
Unless otherwise stated, the material in this guide is from the Learning Portal created by College Libraries Ontario. Content has been adapted for the NWP Learning Commons in June 2021. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY NC SA 4.0 International License.
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