revising and editing

1. revising and editing A Student Guide

2. Revising vs. editing • Revising is taking another look at your writing and making changes to it. • Editing is proofreading or correcting errors in capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.

3. revising • Analyze sentence lengths – You need to make sure you have a balance of short, medium, and long sentences. Also, avoid run-on sentences by using punctuation.

4. revising • Sentence variety contributes to the organization and presentation of the topic throughout the essay.

5. revising • Varied sentence types, lengths, and constructions produce a freshness of expression, insight into the writing situation, a sense of the writer’s voice and tone, and they demonstrate creative writing strategies.

6. Revising • Add Dialogue – You may add dialogue by sharing interesting quotes with your reader or by using a conversation between two or more people to make a point.

7. revising • Show, Don’t Tell – Let your reader experience the story through action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than by telling them facts.

8. editing CUPS • Capitalization – capitalize the first word of every sentence, names of people, places, and proper nouns.

9. editing • Understanding – Reread your essay to determine if it makes sense. Indent every paragraph. Add details about your topic.

10. editing • Punctuation – End each sentence with the correct punctuation (., ?, !). Use commas to separate lists, and before conjunctions.

11. Editing • Spelling – Circle all the words you are unsure of, and use a dictionary to check them.

12. Revising and editing • Read your paper aloud to a friend. Listen for correct grammar and subject verb agreement.

13. Revising and editing • Give your paper to a peer to edit. Sometimes an extra pair of eyes may see things you missed.