Write, Rewrite and Revision

Revising is often where the real magic happens, where mediocre writing is rewritten, fine-tuned, and polished until it shines, Good writing is essentially rewriting. Studies also underscore the importance of revision. Effective revisers were able to improve the quality of the text they generate by spending a greater proportion of time in revision. By contrast, ineffective revisers would devote negligible time to revising.

Part of that finding seems to stem from a lack of understanding around what revision is. Specifically, ineffective revisers would focus on surface-level changes that would not appreciably impact the quality of the writing; they focused on correcting spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc., whereas skilled revisers spent their time on deeper changes to content, structure, and meaning.

Editing, in turn, focuses on prose and style and ensuring the basic architecture of the written piece works well. Changes can still be significant but tend to be more narrowly focused. Finally, proofreading catches the pesky little errors that slip into everyone’s writing, ranging from misspellings to transposed punctuation.

One reason that revisions bedevil so many writers and why so few writers may attend to them is that we need good feedback to make good revisions. It can be prohibitively difficult, even for good writers, to maintain an objective point of view about what works and what doesn’t. Helpful constructive criticism with emphasis on constructive can be invaluable during the revising writing process, but too few workplace writers receive such input. Consequently, not only should individual writers spend more time revising, their organizations should beef up their internal feedback process.

Now that you have an indication of what you can do to revise something, you need to think about where to look at your paper. Revision, like writing, is usually something that is done from a larger to a smaller scale although it doesn't have to be. For example, if you have written a research paper, first, you identified an overall topic that you wanted to research. Then you narrowed this down into a research question. Next you answered this question by creating a working thesis. You explained the thesis in depth by moving through an outline, answering each section of the outline with research and explanation and support. Finally, you reviewed your work for its appropriateness towards its audience.

Revision has become much easier with the rise of computers. Don't be afraid to use your cut and paste key you can always move things back. Don't be afraid to print out your paper, and in the process of trying to see what it might look like in a different format, take a pair of scissors and cut out paragraphs or sentences, move them around and tape them back together.

Also remember that sometimes your best critic for a paper, especially an essay where you have done a lot of research and immersed yourself in the information, is a person who knows nothing about your topic. That is the person who can help you understand where there are words or terms that need to be defined, places where your organization doesn't make as much sense as it might, or paragraphs where you thought the main idea was clear and they just can't see it.

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