One of the most important parts of writing is rewriting, or the process of editing. This process can be neglected when deadlines loom, but it is still important to maintain a professional standard when writing, both in a job and in college. This blog will show you a few quick tips for editing your papers.
Reading
Reading your paper over is the most important part of editing. It is most important to read your paper out loud. When reading a paper in your head, you can edit out mistakes automatically. When you read a paper out loud, you have a much lower chance of doing so. Having someone else read your paper out loud can reduce the chances of this editing even more.
Generally, this kind of editing works well on correcting awkward sentences and adding missing words. When reading out loud, look for places that trip you up or don’t sound right. Also, try to spot areas where you find yourself running out of breath in the middle of a sentence. This can be a sign that you have a run-on.
Comprehension and Cohesion
While reading your paper out loud is a good way to tackle lower-order concerns, like grammar and sentence structure. However, editing your paper also means looking for higher-order concerns, things like ensuring the paper is following an argument or making coherent sense.
When looking over your paper, see if you can identify the thesis statement. Have another person look over your paper and identify the thesis statement. If you aren’t in agreement with what the thesis statement is, then that may be a sign that your thesis statement isn’t clear enough, which means your paper may not have a strong enough argument. It may be important to go back and clarify or rewrite your thesis statement.
The next step to make sure your paper has a coherent structure is to look over each of your paragraphs in turn. When you look them over, consider what the main point of each paragraph is. If you can’t identify a single point the paragraph covers, then your paragraph either has no point, and should be removed, or it has too many points and needs to be split into smaller paragraphs.
Once you have identified the thesis of the paragraph, think about how it works in with your main thesis statement. Each paragraph should do something to support your main thesis. Identify how your paragraph supports your main thesis and if it does a good job proving its point. If your point is unclear or if the paragraph is too weak to support your main argument, you may have to do some reworking.
Conclude your paper by restating your main argument and make sure that you explain why your paper is important. There should be a reason you’re writing, why this topic is important. Make sure to include that.
Once all this is done, you should have completed going over your paper. It will be much better for your proofreading.
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