Revision as of 22:56, 12 April 2008

Introduction

Editing and Revising is the final stage of the writing process that allows you to transform the draft you have into a flawless piece of writing. Essentially, this is where you 'hunt' for mistakes and take a look at the whole document to see if things make sense and sound right.

Editing and Revising Steps

Following are the steps to be followed, as suggested in the course text. We shall summarize each one of them, and provide additional details obtained from class exercises and web resources.

Revision Step 1: Adjust and Reorganize Content

Adjusting and Reorganizing content includes:

• Elaborating a point
• Shortening sections
• Changing location of sentences, sections or paragraphs
• Removing extraneous information such as unnecessary summary
• Checking the logical flow of ideas and fixing them

Revision Step 2: Edit for Style

Style refers to changes that make your writing more interesting, engaging, readable and different from the writing of others. It allows you to express your individuality, and is an important ingredient in keeping the reader interested.

Style includes:

• Using an appropriate tone (Casual Tone, Objective tone, Enthusiastic tone, Serious tone, Authoritative tone, and Friendly tone).
• Writing clear sentences by using proper sentence parts, such as phrase, clause, and sentence types.
• Being concise by replacing abstract nouns with verbs, shortening wordy phrases, replacing long words with shorter ones, leaving out cliches and cutting out extra words.
• Being accurate in wording by distinguishing facts from opinions, avoiding the use of synonyms, and avoiding the use of words that give stronger meaning than you intend.
• Using active voice appropriately and where suitable.
• Using nonsexist language. This means avoiding words like 'he' or 'him', and restructuring the sentence by avoiding the use of personal pronouns, using plural pronouns instead of singular (example: instead of 'each' use 'all') and, shifting to second person pronouns.

To make the writing more interesting, you may:

• Shorten paragraphs and sentences
• Define technical terms
• Add headings, lists, or graphics.

Revision Step 3: Edit for Grammar

Grammatical errors include

• Misuse of apostrophe (example: student's and students')
• Article error (example: an table)
• Capitalization error
• Comma Omission
• Comma splice (having two main clause in a sentence and separating them with a comma)
• Double negatives (example: he said nothing to him)
• Misused semicolon

A complete list of grammatical errors can be found at [1]

Revision Step 4: Edit for Mechanics

Editing for mechanics is the last step in this stage. Mechanical errors include errors such as:

• Misspelled words
• Incorrect page numbers
• Missing Illustrations
• Error in numbers (such as formula, cost, budget information)

Example class exercise