Final Revisions

As you gear up for the final revision of your essay of choice, remember the advice that I gave you in class this week when choosing which essay to revise: pick the essay that has the most potential, not necessarily the essay that received the best grade OR the one you "liked" the best.

Make sure you approach your revisions logically (recalling that your efforts account for 33% of your final grade), focusing on the global revisions first and the sentence-level revisions last.  Your Bedford Handbook provides these suggestions when making global revisions (2b & 2c):

Revision Guidelines

Global Revisions

Sentence-level Revisions

SHARPENING THE FOCUS (Purpose) Look for opportunities to clarify the introduction (especially the thesis) to delete text that is off the point IMPROVING THE ORGANIZATION Look for opportunities to add or sharpen topic sentences to move blocks of text to reparagraph and perhaps to add headings STRENGTHENING THE CONTENT (Development) Look for opportunities to add specific facts, details, and examples to emphasize major ideas to rethink your argument or central insight CLARIFYING THE POINT OF VIEW  (Language) Look for opportunities to make the point of view more consistent to use a more appropriate point of view ENGAGING THE AUDIENCE (Language) Look for opportunities to let readers know why they are reading to motivate readers to read on to use a more appropriate tone

STRENGTHENING SENTENCES (Usage) Look for opportunities to use more active verbs to prune excess words CLARIFYING SENTENCES (Usage) Look for opportunities to balance parallel ideas to supply missing words to untangle mixed constructions to repair misplaced or dangling modifiers to eliminate distracting shifts INTRODUCING VARIETY (Language) Look for opportunities to combine choppy sentences to break up long sentences to vary sentence openings REFINING THE STYLE (Language) Look for opportunities to choose language more appropriate for the subject and audience to choose more exact words

Revision Checklist

Global Revisions

Sentence-level Revisions (Usage)

FOCUS (Purpose) Does the introduction focus on the main point? Is the thesis clear enough? (If there is no thesis, is there a good reason for omitting one?) Are any ideas off the point? ORGANIZATION Does the writer give readers enough organizational cues (such as topic sentences or headings)? Should any text be moved? Are any paragraphs too long or short for easy reading? CONTENT (Development) Are there enough facts, examples, and details to support major ideas? Are the parts proportioned sensibly? Do major ideas receive enough attention? How might the argument be strengthened? POINT OF VIEW (Language) Is the draft free of distracting shifts in point of view? Is the point appropriate? AUDIENCE APPEAL (Language) Does the draft accomplish its purpose to inform us, to persuade us, to entertain us, to call us to action (or some combination of these)? Does the opening paragraph make us want to read on? Do we know why we are reading? Is the tone appropriate?

GRAMMAR Sentence fragments Run-on sentences Subject-verb agreement Pronoun-antecedent agreement Pronoun reference Case of nouns and pronouns Case of who and whom Adjectives and adverbs Standard English verb forms Verb tense, mood, and voice ESL problems PUNCTUATION The comma and unnecessary commas Quotation marks End punctuation The semicolon The colon The apostrophe Other punctuation marks MECHANICS Abbreviations and numbers Italics (underlining) Spelling and the hyphen Capital letters