Writing is a multi-step process, and none of them can be omitted or missed if you want to keep the quality of your academic piece high. One of the very important steps is revision or editing. That often is the last but not least step of the essay writing process. This blog post will tell you how to polish your essay and do it quickly so that in one hour, you have an excellently written essay that you can send to your professor. Keep reading to learn more.
Understanding the Importance of Revision
Revision is not just correcting typos or grammar mistakes. It’s about making your essay sound professional and smooth. It’s also about rechecking all of your facts, arguments, citations, and dates so that everything aligns with your test statement.
Revision is a crucial step that summarizes all your efforts in a high-quality piece. Many students approach revision with a bit of laziness or haste due to tight deadlines and lack of time. However, it would be a big mistake to miss your chance to make your essay a better version of itself. Revision often allows you to receive a higher grade for your work without spending too much time or effort. So, be sure to leave time for this critical step. Reading this blog post will allow you to do your revisions properly and quickly.
Benefits of Revision
One of the most crucial things that revision allows you to do is to enhance clarity. Revisions often will enable you to clarify some of your ideas or put some essential details that were missed during the writing process. When reading your essay, you might find a few weak spots that need more work to be done.For example to explain some of your thoughts or support your ideas with more evidence. Sometimes, when writing, especially in haste, you might be missing some essential element of a storyline or simply come up with unclear or confusing sentences. These areas can be fixed while revising your text.
Another benefit of revision is strengthening structure. For example, you might reread your text and find that the order of your evidence or facts is not effective enough. Or you might see that some of the essential elements of your piece are missing or in the wrong chapter. In this case, you might want to fix the order and structure of your essay to improve the overall logical flow and quality.
You might also want to make a revision to improve your concision. Concise writing is one that is clear, direct, and to the point. Often, you need to remove some parts of the sentences or phrases that are unnecessary and don’t contribute to the overall quality of your essay. By trimming these excesses, you can ensure that every part of your essay serves the purpose and the message.
Of course, the last and most crucial benefit that you gain while revising your essay is fixing all the punctuation and grammar errors that can be found in your text. Some of the mistakes can be found through the text checkers. For example, Grammarly or other online text checkers which make it easier for you to scan your text and find mistakes.
Practical strategies for effective revision
Now that you know the importance of provision, let’s take a look at some of the most effective strategies that will help you make the revision process go easy and fast.
- Take a break. Before you dive into the revision process, you might need to take a short break after you are done with your writing. This will help you clear your thoughts and look at your text from a fresh new point of view. You can spot many mistakes quickly and effectively by taking your time.
- Read aloud. Reading aloud oftentimes is the most effective way to spot the weak points of your text. It’s hard to edit without being objective about your own writing, and reading aloud might help you with that. This is a perfect way to check if your sentences are smooth enough – your ear will more likely catch the rough phrases rather than your eyes.
- Focus on structure. In order to evaluate the overall structure of your writing, pay attention to the organization of ideas, paragraph transitions, and logical coherence. You should consider creating an outline before writing your piece, but if you skip this step, you might recheck the elements of the structure while revising your essay.
- Revise strategically. Approach revision with a coherent plan. For example, first of all, you might reread your text for the first time, edit it, then read it aloud again, and as the final step, run it through the grammar checker. This will help you find and edit every error or spot that needs your attention.
- Seek feedback. Share your writing with a trusted person, for example, your peer or mentor to get constructive criticism. Be sure to also compare your piece to the ones that you can find as a sample. Check the structure and the overall tone of your essay to see if they are suitable for the topic that you are writing about.
- Ask and answer. Try asking a few questions on behalf of a reader, for example, what was the main message, and find the answer to the question in your text. This way, you will ensure that your writing is easy to understand and follow for a person who is not as informed about the topic as you are.
- Read your text backwards. When proofreading, you might find reading backward a very effective and productive way to revise your text. If you have been working on it for a long time, you might find yourself a little biased about the structure. So, try to check the logical flow by reading the text from the final chapter toward the introduction part, and you will understand what is missing.
- Use active voice. Whenever possible, use active voice, and while revising your text, check if the active voice is the one that is mostly used. Surely, there might be sentences that can’t be structured in another way, but an active voice should prevail.
- Consult style guides. If you have specific requirements regarding the academic style of your piece, be sure to check the style guides such as APA, MLA, and Chicago to be sure that you have everything styled in the right way. You might want to pay additional attention to citations.
- Delegate editing and proofreading. Sometimes you need a professional assistance with your piece. For example, if it is a long and challenging assignment, like dissertation. In this case, you might consider to order editing service from our team of expereinced writers.
- Eliminate redundancy. Identify and remove redundant information or repetitive phrases that might occur in your essay. Some topics are more prone to creating a lot of redundancy when talking about them. Using synonyms and equivalent phrases might help you a lot. Redundancy makes text look less professional, and it becomes much harder to read, so make sure to work on repetitive phrases.
Conclusion
Revision is not that hard if you have a specific plan in your head. You can create and follow your typical revision plan step by step so you don’t miss anything when polishing your essay. You can even create a list and check the boxes as you go. If you are in a hurry, be sure to use our easy tips on how to make the revision process easier and less daunting.
Karen Palmer
