15 Revision

Let’s say your instructor has given you an assignment. You did all the right things, gave yourself plenty of time to research and write, made a solid argument, wrote the full word count and showed the instructor. Their response was “Great draft. Make sure you revise this.”

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!?!

It means that while you probably did a good job of writing the document, there is always something that can be tweaked to make it stronger. But there’s more to revision than just “writing better”. Revising will help you check if you’ve responded to the assignment instructions and clearly communicated your ideas. Revising will also help you correct grammatical, punctuation, and presentation issues.

Before you start revising ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you know what you are writing about? What is the topic, and did you address the prompt?
• Who is the audience? (**HINT: it’s probably not your instructor. Review the Audience section of this text if you are still uncertain).
• Did you answer ALL PARTS of the prompt?
• Did the prompt call for examples and citations from the text? Did you include those quotes and citations?

Once you are comfortable with your writing in its first draft form, now it’s time for some revision.

Revision is the act of “re- viewing” or “re- seeing” your writing. It is best to give yourself some time away from the document before you try to revise.

When you are revising, try thinking about your document in two stages:

• Globally – the whole document’s content
• Locally – the way the document is structured

Global revision

When you first begin revising, you should focus on the whole document. Don’t waste time thinking about word choice or line structure just yet. The reason for this is if you spend 30 minutes perfecting a sentence, then decide the paragraph needs to be cut, you wasted your own time.

Here are some questions to help you revise Globally:

• Is your thesis clear? If not: do you know how to write a thesis? (visit X for help with this task)

• Does each paragraph support the examples you included as part of your thesis?

• Are there paragraphs that don’t support the document you are creating? Are there sections that can be deleted without losing the meaning of the document?
• Does the way it is ordered make sense to the kind of document you are writing? (ex: if I am writing about how to wash a dog, it would be better to write about types of shampoo before I explain how to rinse a dog.)

• Did you include an introduction with a background on the topic and a conclusion that summarizes the key arguments and perspectives in the draft?

• Have you elaborated, explained, evaluated, and given examples that demonstrate your sound and valid reasoning?

• Do you use clear transitions / signposting so the reader can follow your thinking? Do you know how to write transitions?
• Can you locate any strengths or weaknesses in the writing? (ex: are you struggling to link paragraphs together? Or did you write a strong introduction but a weak conclusion?)

Once you’ve looked over your whole document and answered these questions, it is highly suggested to put it away and come back to it later.

Local revision

Here are some tips to help with revision:

• Read your writing out loud or use a screen reader to have the program read it out loud to you. And it needs to be out loud. Reading silently does not help us catch our errors. When we are writing, we know what we meant to say but because our brains move faster than our fingers on a keyboard, we might forget words or entire sentences. To hear someone else read what we wrote, we begin to hear what needs fixing in our documents.

The following questions can help you during the local revision process:

• Have you used spell check and a grammar checker? We will discuss these more in a later section.
• Have you properly capitalized words? Talk to text programs are notoriously bad at capitalizing the personal I in sentences.
• Have you used the correct voice for the writing. (most writing will require active voice, some will require passive voice. You will need to check the style of document you are writing to help figure that out.)
• Have you avoided emotional language and hyperbole?
• Have you used the correct spelling of the word? (‘I will weight hear for the bus.’ Is a sentence that may not be noticed by the spell checker/grammar checker. Yet it is still wrong.)
• Did you define any technical or unusual terms?
• Did you vary your sentence structure? Not all topics are exciting to write or read about, but when you vary your sentences, you can make it less boring.
• Is your tone appropriate? (If you are writing an academic document, did you try to remain objective? If you are writing a personal narrative, did you try to evoke some emotion?)
• Did you document all sources ideas and information using the citation style required by your professor? (see plagiarism for why you need to document all your sources and ideas.)

And finally:  Is everything accurate?

Did you go through both questions and act when you noticed things needed to be changed? Then congratulations! You’ve revised your draft.