One of the not-so-hidden secrets to good writing is revising and editing. Even the best writers start out by just throwing their ideas onto the screen. They know that the magic really happens while they are revising. Professional writers will tell you that completing the first draft means they are only about halfway done. Some would even say that finishing the first draft is the place where the real writing and word-smithing begins.

The revising and editing phase of the writing process is where your paper goes from “Hmm, not bad” to “Hey, this is really great!” In this chapter, you will learn some powerful revision tools used by professional writers and editors. Specifically, you will learn how to use the “Four Levels of Editing,” which move from global issues to the smallest details. These levels include—

Level 1: Global Revision. Adjust your document’s overall approach, using genre to sharpen the topic, angle, purpose, thesis, and appropriateness for the readers and for context.

Level 2: Substantive Editing. Focus on your document’s content, organization, and design.

Level 3: Copyediting. Revise the style for clarity, persuasion, and consistency, paying close attention to paragraphs and sentences.

Level 4: Proofreading. Inspect your document’s surface features, such as grammatical correctness, spelling, and usage.

As shown in Figure 8.1, you should work from the “global level” (global editing) to the “local level” (proofreading). That way, you can begin by making large-scale changes to your rough draft. Then, as you move closer to finishing the final draft, you can focus exclusively on style and correctness.

Level 1: Global Revision

Let’s start with your first draft. When revising globally, it’s time to reexamine and reconsider your project’s topic, angle, and purpose, and your understanding of your readers and the context.

Figure 8.2 shows an excerpt from a student’s first draft of a proposal. Figure 8.3 shows how this same student’s (Zoe’s) original notes helped her challenge her ideas and rethink how she could persuade her readers to agree with her.

Challenge Your Draft’s Topic, Angle, and Purpose

You need to challenge your first draft to make sure it’s doing what you intended. Reread your draft, paying special attention to the following global issues:

• Topic. How has your topic evolved since you started? Do you now have a better topic, or does it need to be broadened a little and extended in new directions? Can you find any places where your paper strays from the topic? Can you find any gaps in coverage where you don’t address a key issue about your topic?
• Angle. Have you shown what is new about your topic or what has changed recently? Have you connected your paper to any recent events or changes in our culture? Have you uncovered any unexpected issues that complicate or challenge your own views?
• Purpose. Is your purpose clear in the introduction of your paper, and have you achieved that purpose by the conclusion? Does your purpose need to be more focused?
• Thesis statement. If you are writing in a genre that calls for an explicit thesis statement, have you announced your thesis clearly and prominently? Have you considered what kind of thesis statement to use: informative, argumentative, question/ open-ended, or implied?

Think About Your Readers (Again) and the Context

As you drafted your paper, chances are you gained a better understanding of your audience’s needs, values, and attitudes. Now try to put yourself in your readers’ place to imagine how they will react to your ideas and the way you have expressed them.

• Needs. Have you considered how the genre and topic will lead readers toward certain expectations and needs? Have you given readers all the information they require to make a decision? What additional information do they need if they are going to agree with you? Do they expect an explicit thesis statement?
• Values. Are your readers’ values different from yours? If so, have you anticipated how their values might cause them to react to your ideas differently than you would? Can you add anything that would help build trust between you and them?
• Attitudes. Have you adjusted the text to fit your primary readers’ attitude about your topic? If they have a positive attitude about your topic, have you reinforced that attitude? If they have a negative attitude, have you given them good reasons to think differently about your topic?

Now look at the context for your document to check whether you have addressed issues of place, medium, and social and political influences.

• Place. How will the physical place in which readers experience your document shape how they read it? What will they see, hear, and feel? How will the history and culture of this place shape how readers will interpret what you are saying?
• Medium. How will the medium (e.g., paper, podcast, presentation) influence how people react to your message or interpret what you have to say?
• Social and political influences. How will current social, economic, and political trends influence how your readers feel about what you have to say? If you need more help profiling your readers, turn to Chapter 9: Elements of the Rhetorical Situation.

Level 2: Substantive Editing

When doing “substantive editing,” you should look closely at the content, organization, and design of your paper.

Determine Whether You Have Enough Information (or Too Much)

Your paper should have enough information to support your claims and explain your ideas to readers, but you don’t want to include more content than you need.

• Do your thesis statement and main claim (usually in the introduction and/or the conclusion) describe what you’re trying to achieve in this paper?
• Are your claims in the body of the paper expressed completely and accurately? Could you express them in a more prominent, precise, or compelling way?
• Can you find any places where your ideas need more support or where your thesis and claims need more evidence drawn from sources?
• Are there any digressions you can remove? Can you trim the text down? If you need more information or sources to back up your ideas, turn to Chapter 11: Sources.

Reorganize Your Work to Better Use the Genre

Your readers will expect your document to conform to the genre’s typical organizational pattern. This does not mean mechanically following a formula. It does mean that your document should reflect the features that readers expect to find in a document that uses this genre.

• Does your draft have each of the sections included in this genre? If not, are you making a conscious choice to leave out a section or merge it with something else?
• Does your introduction do its job according to the conventions of the genre? Does it draw your readers in, introduce them to the topic, state the thesis and main claim, and stress the importance of the subject?
• Are your main ideas prominent enough? If not, can you move these main ideas to places where your readers are more likely to see them?
• Does the conclusion do its job according to the conventions of the genre? Does it restate the thesis or main point, reemphasize the importance of the topic, and offer a look to the future?
• Do the introduction and conclusion echo each other? If not, can you adjust them so they reflect the same topic, angle, purpose, and thesis?

Chapter 4: Introductions and Chapter 7: Conclusions offer strategies for writing good introductions and conclusions, and Chapter 6: Body Paragraphs discusses paragraphing and sections.

Look for Ways to Improve the Design

Review how your document looks, focusing on whether the design is a good fit for your readers. The design should make your text easier to read and more attractive.

• Does the design of the document match your readers’ expectations for the genre? Is the visual tone of the design appropriate for this genre?
• From a distance, does the text look inviting, interesting, and easy to read? Can you use page design, images, or color to make it more attractive and inviting to your readers?
• Have you used the design principles of balance, alignment, grouping, consistency, and contrast to organize and structure the page layout?
• Have you used graphics and charts to reinforce and clarify the written text, while making your text more visually interesting?

Ask Someone Else to Read Your Work

Substantive editing is a good time to ask others to review your work. Ask a friend or classmate to read through your paper. Tell him or her to concentrate on content, organization, and design. Your editor can ignore any typos or grammatical errors, because right now you need feedback on higher-level features and problems. Figure 8.4 shows some helpful substantive editing comments from Cruz, a fellow student in Zoe’s class, on her second draft. Zoe has made significant improvements to her first draft. Cruz’s thorough comments will help her improve it even more, because they highlight the proposal’s weaknesses in content, organization, and design.

Level 3: Copyediting

Copyediting involves improving the “flow” of your text by making it clear, concise, consistent, and correct (sometimes called the “Four Cs”). When copyediting, you should focus exclusively on your document’s title and headings, paragraphs, and sentences. Your ideas need to be as clear as possible and stated as concisely as possible. Also, make sure your ideas are consistent and that your facts are accurate.

Review Your Title and Headings

Your title should grab readers’ attention, and the headings in your document should help them quickly grasp your ideas and understand how the document is structured.

• Is the title unique, and does it grab readers’ attention? If your readers saw the title alone, would they be interested in reading your paper?
• Do the headings accurately forecast the information that follows them?
• Do the headings grab the readers’ attention and draw them into the text?
• Are the headings consistent in grammar and parallel to each other in structure?

Edit Paragraphs to Make Them Concise and Consistent

Work through your document paragraph by paragraph, paying attention to how each one is structured and how it works with the paragraphs around it. As you read through each paragraph, ask yourself these questions:

• Would a transition sentence at the beginning of the paragraph help make a bridge from the prior paragraph?
• Is each paragraph unified? Does each sentence in the paragraph stick to a consistent topic? Do any sentences seem to stray from the paragraph’s claim or statement?
• Does each paragraph logically follow from the paragraph that preceded it, and does it prepare readers for the paragraph that follows?
• If the paragraph is long or complex, would it benefit from a point sentence at its end that states or restates the paragraph’s overall point?

You can learn more about writing better paragraphs in Chapter 6.

Revise Sentences to Make Them Clearer

After you reshape and refine each paragraph, focus your attention on the clarity and style of individual sentences.

• Are the subjects of your sentences easy to locate? Do they tend to be placed early in the sentences where your readers can easily find them?
• Do the verbs express the action of the sentence? Can you remove any passive verbs (e.g., is, was, be, has been) by replacing them with active verbs?
• Can you eliminate any unnecessary prepositional phrases?
• Are your sentences breathing length? Are any sentences too long (i.e., do they take longer than one breath to say out loud)?

Revise Sentences to Make Them More Descriptive

Now, work on giving your sentences more impact and power.

• Do your sentences use vivid detail to help readers see, hear, touch, taste, and smell what you are writing about?
• Would any similes, metaphors, or analogies help your readers to understand or visualize what you are talking about?
• Do your sentences generally use a consistent tone and voice? Can you describe in one word the tone you are trying to set in your paper?

Level 4: Proofreading

Proofreading is the final step in editing your document, during which you should search for any typos, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and word usage problems. Proofreading takes patience and practice, but it is critical to successful writing.

Read Your Writing Out Loud

Your ear will often detect problems that slip past your eyes. Read your work out loud to yourself or have someone else read it to you.

Read Your Draft Backward

Aloud or silently, read the last sentence, then the next-to-last, all the way through to the first. Reading “backward” helps you focus on sentence constructions and misspelled words rather than their meaning.

Read a Printed Copy of Your Work

If you have been drafting and editing on your screen, reading a print copy will help you to see your writing from a fresh perspective. You might even try changing the font or line spacing to give the text a different look.

Know Your Grammatical Weaknesses

If you know you tend to make certain grammatical mistakes, devote one proofreading pass to those problems alone. For instance, if you tend to use run-on sentences, devote one entire proofreading session to looking only for that kind of mistake.

Use Your Spellchecker and Grammar Checker

Spellcheck has become a reliable tool over the years. A spellchecker can flag most of those annoying typos and spelling errors. (Look for the squiggly red lines that high-light potential problems.) You should not, however, rely exclusively on your spellchecker or grammar checker for proofreading. Spellcheckers sometimes flag technical terms that are not included in their spelling dictionaries. Grammar checkers sometimes flag constructions such as passive voice that may be appropriate for the genre. Unlike these electronic tools, you are able to exercise judgment and take into account the genre, purpose, and context of your project.

Instead, read through your document looking for possible spelling and grammar issues. If you aren’t sure about a flagged word or sentence, use your best judgment, consulting a dictionary or a usage guide for help. You can use online dictionaries and usage guides to find quick answers about spelling, grammar, and word usage.

Peer Review: Asking for Advice

The keys to productive peer review are focus and honesty. As the writer, you need to tell your reviewers specifically what kind of help you need. For example, you might say:

• “This is an early draft, so don’t pay any attention to the grammar and wording. Look at my ideas and my thesis. Could they be stronger or sharper?”
• “My readers are high school students who are considering skipping college. Do you think this draft addresses their needs and answers the questions they would have?”
• “My thesis is X. What can I do to make sure that it comes through clearly and persuasively?”
• “Please look at the introduction closely. Do I introduce the topic clearly and grab the readers’ attention?”

Encourage your reviewers to be honest about your draft. You need them to do more than say “I like it,” “It looks good,” or “I would give it an A.” Ask them to be as tough as possible, so you can find places to improve your writing. When you are editing someone else’s paper, write your comments and suggestions for improvements on a sheet of paper or in an e-mail, so the author has some-thing concrete to work with while revising the draft. Also, make sure you tell the author what you liked about his or her paper, not just the negative stuff. Authors need to know what they are doing well.

Revision Strategy: Reverse Outline

Evaluate the global organization of your text by writing a reverse outline. Unlike traditional outlines, which are written before drafting, reverse outlines reflect the content of written drafts.

In a separate document or in your text’s margins, record the main idea of each paragraph. Then, consider whether the order of your ideas is logical. This method also will help you identify ideas that are out of place or digressive. You may also evaluate organization by printing the text and cutting it up so that each paragraph appears on a separate piece of paper. You may then easily reorder the paragraphs to test different organizational schemes.

The reverse outline mentioned above is also known as a post-draft outline. Guidance for how to complete one for an entire essay draft, as well as for an individual problematic paragraph, can be found in this presentation.