10 Techniques to revise your writing
Whether you are drafting an essay for school or thesis, the review method is necessary if you want to confirm that your writing is error-free in contexts of grammar and flow. To be effective, you must have an approach- framework or outline for how to proceed. When you’re fresh to professional writing, it’s convenient to believe that you can get the phrases on the document and submit your work. Even if you recognize the value of revisions, you may be unsure how to proceed since you lack the extensive connections, advisors, techniques, and materials that more professional writers possess.
Purpose of revising
Revising is the aspect of editing that includes “broader-view” variations like changing the primary subject matter, rearranging the sequence of paragraphs, or changing the framework of the writing. Also, it entails in-depth improvements such as optimizing word choice, eliminating redundancies, paraphrasing, and correcting grammar and punctuation errors.
What’s the point of revising? It isn’t easy to concentrate on every perspective of your text while preparing a basic outline. Revision allows you to zoom out and capture errors you neglected the initial time, and checking a rough draft can reveal mistakes you have not predicted.
However, tweaking, modifying, and proofreading your writing do not have to be challenging or distressing. Here are 17 essential revision techniques for beginning writers, although authors at any step of their professions can gain from them;
Acknowledge your text
Review your content before you modify it. If you begin updating before going through it, you may have to undo a few of the adjustments. It can happen if you have not understood the rhythm and tone of your content due to your emphasis on checking for errors instead of grasping the content. Sure, you can overlook the point of your writing—easy to believe you have written something which conveys something, but when revising, you realize it’s not what you want to say or to deviate in a direction you didn’t intend to go in.
Editing vs. Proofreading
Editing doesn’t imply you have to review the content for typing errors and improperly positioned punctuation marks. It’s all about enhancing the story, paragraph sections, and sentences. Proofreading comes after editing. Although it is acceptable to do some corrections when editing, you must perform a comprehensive revision concentrated on editing, and then the next is centered on proofreading.
Justify and confirm your writing
Every statement, issue, point, and term in your message must have a purpose. Remove anything that doesn’t have to be present in your writing. Delete it if it adds no valuation to your text. Try this once: take a part of your text and question yourself to cut 10% of the phrases and erase them. Then cut the next 10%. You’ll have 30 percent fewer words at the end of this exercise, but your content has the same sense with fewer words. Your writing will be simpler, briefer, and more efficiently expressed. Perform this a few times with different short stories, papers, and blog entries to understand where your crutch terms appear and how you can optimize your content to be more impactful from the beginning.
Read out aloud
The core element of editing and revising is going over every word and examining your writing at the phrase, statement, and paragraph stages. You must be able to evaluate the entire text or manuscript for comprehension and flow. It means you’ll have to go through every bit multiple times. For assessing your content, read it gradually and aloud—we detect numerous issues when we switch modes, and you will recognize stuff when speaking your content aloud that you could have missed when reciting silently. This tactic will expose many minor mistakes and typos, allowing you to enhance the rhythm of your writing.
Emphasize on formatting
Formatting and editing are vital to conveying your content professionally. So, focusing on uniformity and requirements in both assists in displaying the content in an ideal manner. Font, indentations, and paragraph and line spacing are all examples of formatting. For instance, chapter topics and subtopics should use the same typeface and spacing and format your citations consistently.
Customize and modify online
Several editors and authors used to swear by the printed text, but, it is no longer the best way to edit—digital tools allow you to modify quicker and more effectively with a computer. If you start editing online, you’ll find it more convenient than the hard copy, which can be time-consuming and involves numerous transfers and not to mention being ecologically harmful due to all that paper use. You must know how to employ Microsoft Word’s track changes feature to demonstrate what improvements you’ve made to a file. It is incredibly beneficial if you are determined to work with the best editor, as you will be able to view what variations are being created or recommended and know from the expertise to improve your next piece. After rewriting go over each edit and decide whether to acknowledge or reject it. It is an effective dual method for editing: make the adjustments once, then authorize them.
Make use of precise language
Most readers enjoy exact details because they help audiences to envision scenes in considerable detail. You may discover specifics in the writing details that you include. Prevent using general expressions such as “Elizabeth was a lovely woman.” Instead, describe what makes that lady so special or lovely.
Flow of Content
Long paragraphs are typically hard to read. One or two lengthy statements are acceptable, as are lengthy paragraphs. Even so, a series of them may irritate the audience. When sentences are too long, it’s confusing to follow what a writer is saying you want your statements to be straightforward, it should be shorter than 15 words. And, keep your passages as short as possible. Audiences struggle to keep up with long paragraphs and you may lose your audience’s interest even when you’re writing an engrossing scene!
Consider reading in reverse
You may know about reading in reverse to help with proofreading in certain cases. Often this works by allowing you to avoid your brain’s tendency to fill in the details with what it anticipates to see, allowing you to identify spelling errors and missing terms that you might normally ignore. It is pointless in terms of content, where the purpose is derived from the diverse phrases and word structure. Instead, read from behind to front, from one statement to the next to facilitate that each sentence and paragraph is internally unified-makes perfect sense.
Check your grammar and proofread
Double-check your spelling and grammar. These types of technical matters are the simplest to resolve; the tricky aspect is detecting them. When you’ve finished refining the wording, go over it one last time, looking for only errors. If you are unsure about your spelling, grammar, or typos, you can use Grammarly to review the writing errors for you. You may be tempted to rush through proofreading because you believe you are nearing the end, it is a huge mistake. Although your writing is coming to an end, it is best to read gradually. This necessitates seeing each term and processing every statement. Think about going over the paragraphs again just to be certain.