Many students do not pay editing nearly as much attention as it deserves; some even forgo this stage of essay writing altogether, believing it to be a waste of time. However, they can hardly do themselves and their grades a worse service, for editing can both make and break an essay or any other type of academic paper. When you edit your assignment, you notice many things that could have eluded you in the process of writing. You get a chance to make corrections and improvements. You can make your writing clearer and more informative for the readers. In other words, it gives you an opportunity to take a step back and see your paper as a whole from a different perspective – something you can hardly do in the process of writing. In this article, we will show you a few ways you can dramatically improve your essay at this stage.
1. Create a Checklist
You do not have to reinvent the wheel every time you edit and proofread your paper. Professional writers usually use editing checklists – i.e., they have a list of things they do every time they edit their work, and they always do them in the same order. This way they do not forget anything, and the entire process gets more streamlined. What you have on your checklist depends on you. For example, you may have a list of your most common mistakes so that you can pay special attention to them. Alternatively, you may have a few different checklists for different types of assignments: e.g., custom checklists for argumentative, descriptive, and narrative essays.
2. Remove as Much as You Can
Feel free to use as many words as you like when you write, but once you are finished, go through your essay several times, trying to remove something each time. Pay attention to each word, sentence, and paragraph, asking yourself, “Does it really help me drive my point home?” Chances are, you can remove a lot without harming the composition of your essay in any way. Many students believe that the more they say, the better – after all, they are asked to meet a certain word count. However, a good writer is not somebody who says a lot, but rather somebody who is able to make a point without wasting much space and without using unnecessary words.
3. Use Mostly Active Voice
Active voice means that the subject of the sentence performs the action represented by a verb. Active voice makes your sentences look and sound more energetic and improves their readability. We do not mean that you should never use passive voice at all – like with any other rule, there are exceptions to it. Sometimes passive voice looks more natural in a sentence, sometimes it can help you convey a specific shade of meaning. However, make it a rule to check every sentence in passive voice and ask yourself if you can better express the same thought in active voice. If such a replacement does not feel awkward and stilted, an active voice is most likely the way to go.
4. Get Rid of Adverbs
Adverbs are used to modify the meaning of other words (usually verbs). Many students love them because they are a cheap and easy way to increase your word count. However, they also make your writing cumbersome and weak. The thing about adverbs is, you can usually either remove them or replace the word they modify with something more expressive. Here are some examples: “asserts” rather than “says confidently”, “rushed” rather than “moved quickly”, etc.
5. Do More than One Edit
If you want to do your editing properly, you should make it a rule to go through your text several times, each time paying attention to different aspects of your writing:
- Firstly, read through the entire text and check it for logical mistakes, glaring omissions, and obvious blunders. Do not correct them right away – just make notes of where they are so that you can get back to them later. Otherwise, you may find out that by changing something in one place you disrupt the entire internal structure of your paper and now have to rework other parts of it;
- Secondly, make all the corrections that require you to change significant portions of the paper;
- Thirdly, go through the paper line by line and check it for mistakes in grammar, sentence structure, and syntax;
- Finally, proofread the paper: check if you use proper spelling and understand the meaning of all the words you use. Do not make corrections of this type before so that you do not get distracted from more serious problems with your writing.
6. Ask for Help if Necessary
Sometimes, your own editing and proofreading skills are just not enough. Fortunately, these days you can easily find websites that offer this kind of services. Hiring a professional editor has an added benefit: other people are always better at noticing mistakes in our writing than we are. If your workload is particularly huge, you can even delegate some of your English writing tasks completely – for example, to essay writers at AdvancedWriters.
7. Use Shorter and Simpler Language
Some students believe that using long and complex words makes them look smart and sophisticated. In reality, they are more likely to pass as insecure and trying too hard to impress. Good writing does not try to confuse its readers – it expresses thoughts in as simple and straightforward language as possible. When you edit, always look for ways to replace long and awkward words with short and snappy ones.
While editing alone will not earn you an excellent grade, it can help you get better results even if the original draft of your essay is rather mediocre. Speaking of which, most first drafts are mediocre at best – you have to polish and perfect them before they can achieve their full potential. Editing is the tool that can turn even a second-rate piece of writing into something exceptional.
