The third phase of the writing process is revising your paper.

3. Revising. Once you have a draft of your paper, it is time to review and revise the content of the paper. In this phase, you are examining your own critical thinking process and reading the paper with a view to ensuring that you have effectively communicated your ideas.

One of the best ways to engage in the purposeful process of revision is to work your way back through each of the elements of the writing process to double check that you have completed all tasks and that you are satisfied with the quality of your work. To support this process, I have organized the checklists below to parallel the main sections of this writing resource. Some of these ideas were adapted from Fowler et al. (2005).

1. Embracing Professional Writing

• Are you writing in the first person, active voice when appropriate?
• Do the personal, social, political, professional values expressed through your writing reflect careful attention to issues of cultural diversity and professional ethics?
• Is your writing free of personal biases or sociocultural discourses that perpetuate social injustice?
• Are you consistently expressing yourself in a professional tone?

2. Exhibiting Academic Integrity and Intellectual Honesty

• Have you carefully implemented principles of academic integrity and intellectual honesty?
• Is it clear to you what constitutes plagiarism, and do you know how to avoid it?
• Is it clear to you when you need to cite others for their ideas versus when you are speaking from your voice or introducing common knowledge?
• Have you accurately tracked the source of each paraphrase or quotation?
• Are all the ideas you have drawn from others accurately and consistently tied back to their sources?
• Have you translated ideas into your own words, whenever possible?
• Have you accessed original sources, rather than relying on secondary sources?

3. Establishing a Scholarly Foundation

• Are you able to discern whether the sources you choose meet the standards necessary to provide a scholarly foundation for your writing?
• Have you selected current, relevant articles to support your ideas and chosen older sources only if are considered seminal contributions to health disciplines knowledge
• Have you used an appropriate number of resources for the nature of the paper you are writing?
• Does your selection of supporting literature include diverse and nondominant voices?
• Do your sources reflect an appropriate balance of research articles versus theoretical or conceptual articles, depending on the writing goal?
• Have you made substantive use of each of the sources in your reference list?

4. Developing a Writing Plan: Critical Deconstruction

• Have you clearly stated the topic and objective of your paper?
• Was your topic flexible enough and sufficiently broad to enable continued reflection on, and integration of, new ideas from the professional literature?
• Is your topic relevant to your field within the health disciplines and responsive to cultural diversity?
• Does your objective clearly align with the levels of learning identified in the assignment or targeted through graduate, professional writing?
• Have you aligned, where applicable, the nature and structure of your paper to the type of literature review you are targeting?
• Have you systematically reviewed the professional literature on the topic to give you sufficient understanding of the current research, contexts, and applications related to your topic?
• Have you organized your notes in a way that allows you to identify themes, track diverse perspectives, and point to gaps in the professional literature?
• Have you demonstrated critical reading, thinking, and writing throughout the paper?
• Does your writing reflect your mindful application of the principles of cognitive complexity versus cognitive rigidity?
• Have you applied critical thinking to analyze potential biases or assumptions?

5. Drafting Your Paper: Critical Reconstruction

• Have you carefully analyzed the themes, trends, current issues, contexts, gaps, and unanswered questions in the professional literature?
• Have you organized your paper, where applicable, to follow the basic structure of a literature review as either a foundation for research or a theoretical or conceptual paper?
• Is the main thesis (argument) of your paper clear and well-constructed?
• Does your thesis or problem statement align with the objective of the paper and the levels of learning targeted?
• Have you drafted your thesis or problem statement so that it takes a position and is arguable?
• Is your voice and point of view clear to the reader?
• Have you identified theories or concepts that influenced how you framed your thesis and arguments?
• Have you clearly defined all terms you use?
• Have you provided, where applicable, a conceptual framework for your writing?
• Do the points and subpoints in your argument clearly flow from, and support, the thesis or problem statement?
• Have you organized the key points in your argument in a systematic and logical fashion?
• Have you presented your key points in a way that reflects the levels of learning required (i.e., analysis, synthesis, evaluation)?
• Have you linked each paragraph, in some way, to the thesis or problem statement?
• Do your subpoints in each paragraph provide enough examples or evidence to support the key points?
• Have you effectively synthesized and integrated the professional literature to support each key argument?
• Have you attended to the levels of learning targeted to guide your integration of the professional literature?
• Does your introduction include the objective of the paper and your thesis or problem statement?
• Does your introduction capture the reader’s attention and provide the reader with a sense of direction and context for the paper?
• Does your thesis statement lead logically through your key arguments to the conclusions you draw?
• Does your conclusion wrap up the key points in the paper?
• Does your conclusion succinctly restate the thesis or problem statement in a new way?

Click here for a MS Word version of these checklists.

As noted at the beginning of this resource, the focus of the APA manual is editorial style, which comes into play in the last phase of the writing process.

4. Editing. Although editing occurs throughout the entire writing process, you should also plan a deliberate editorial style review of your paper. This includes aligning grammar, writing style, citations and references, tables and figures, and overall format of your paper with the standards outlined in the current APA manual.

Some students decide to ignore APA formatting and forfeit the corresponding percentage of their grade; what they do not realize is that editorial skills may also impact the remaining portion of their grade. Your ability to demonstrate critical thinking, to reflect the levels of learning targeted in the course assignment, and to clearly and effectively articulate an argument is directly related to the quality of the writing. If you have a great idea, but you are not able to articulate it clearly, your instructor likely will not get it!

On the other hand, placing too much emphasis on editorial style (i.e., APA) early on can stifle your creativity, cause unnecessary anxiety, and restrict your freedom to make and learn from your mistakes. So, you may want to save the details of APA formatting for this phase of the writing process, until these become second nature. At this point, the more you are able to fine-tune your writing style through a careful editing process, the more meaningful and straightforward your communication will be.

The checklists below are intended as prompts to support you to perform a final edit on your paper. Guidance for addressing gaps you identify is found in the APA Manual. I have drawn some of these ideas from Fowler et al. (2005).

1. Writing Style

• Have you made the relationship among various parts of the paper transparent?
• Have you used appropriate transitional devices to support the flow of argument from one paragraph to another?
• Have you written in a concise way, without extraneous words that distract from the meaning?
• Is your writing precise and clear, without vague pronouns or jargon that may distract and confuse the reader?
• Have you used appropriate structuring skills to link the various components of the argument (i.e., paragraphs) to one another?
• Have you chosen consistent and appropriate verb tenses within various sections of the paper?
• Does your sentence structure support clarity and precision of meaning?
• Is there agreement between subjects and verbs, nouns and pronouns?
• Have you carefully placed modifiers close to the word they modify?
• Have you cordoned off nonessential clauses with commas, where appropriate, so they do not dilute the main message of each sentence?
• Are you using parallel construction, voice, and verb tense within each sentence?
• Have you double-checked for Canadian spelling and for words that are spelled correctly, but used incorrectly? Although APA privileges American spelling, professional writing style should reflect the context and target audience.
• Does your use of punctuation enhance the flow of meaning in your writing?
• Have you overused or underused certain types of punctuation?
• Does your stylistic use and formatting (e.g., use of italics, bold, hyphens) of individual words reflect the guidelines in the APA manual?

2. Citations and References

• Have you added appropriate citations for each key point and subpoint in your argument?
• Have you listed the sources in each cluster of citations in alphabetical order?
• Is your format for each citation accurate?
• Have you removed the date from repeat citations within the text of individual paragraphs?
• Have you accurately presented quotations given in the paper?
• Have you included page or paragraph numbers to indicate exactly the source of each quotation?
• Have you correctly block-formatted lengthy quotations? Check the current APA manual for the applicable word count.
• Do all of your in-text citations have matching entries in your reference list?
• Does each of your references contain full and accurate information?
• Do the DOI and URL links function to take readers to the appropriate source?

3. Formatting Your Paper

• Do your margins and font size reflect APA standards?
• Is your title page accurately formatted?
• Have you placed an appropriate running head on each page?
• Are each of your pages numbered using APA format?
• Have you double-spaced the entire paper?
• Have you deleted unnecessary white space between headings and paragraphs?
• Have you indented paragraphs, text in lists, and block quotations accurately?
• Have you placed your references on a separate page?
• Have you double-spaced each reference entry and used a hanging indent?

Click here for a Microsoft Word version of these checklists.

Note. You are not required, typically, to provide an abstract, table of contents, list of figures, or list of tables unless specified in course assignments. However, these elements are often required for theses and other culminating experiences in graduate programs. Please refer to the guidelines provided by the Faculty of Graduate Studies if you are an Athabasca University student and the APA manual for additional formatting guidelines.

It is important to leave yourself at least three to four hours to complete the final formatting and proofreading of your paper. You may not need this much time, but I am almost always surprised at how much longer a task like this takes than I initially anticipated. After working hard to plan, draft, and revise your paper, it would be a shame to lose marks on these final editorial details.