How to Edit Your Essay
Writing an essay has a few stages, the last but not the least one is editing the final draft. Unfortunately, many students just skip this part of writing process due to the lack of time. Probably, we all have been in the situations when there is no time for editing. Moreover, this mistake can have some serious consequences because editing allows reducing embarrassing typos, grammar mistakes and what is the most important review structure and logic of the paper one more time. During the editing process, you can make certain one more time that all of the requirements have been fully met and all questions have been answered.
Professors expect to receive well-written papers of high quality. If we are speaking about presentation, for example, this means the project should be well prepared and perfectly presented, free of spelling/punctuation/formatting mistakes and include a cover and reference pages. If your assignment has typos, it distracts your professor from the main points of your paper and shows your negligence. These mistakes will cost you good grades because all instructors take writing errors into account when grading writing assignments.
Editing an essay is a good form of quality control: you can use it not only to correct spelling or formatting mistakes but also to ensure that evidence and arguments in your paper are reasonable and logical. Moreover, it is vital to check the logic of paper structure during essay editing. This means if you want to complete great writing assignments, you should not neglect essays editing!
Thus, we prepared for you best tips on how to edit an essay. Below you can find useful tips on how to edit an essay and consequently get the best results.
1. Always Print Your Paper. ALWAYS.
We do realize that printing your essay is a pain. However, it is totally worth doing! The statistic says that reviewing printed paper is more sufficient. The most successful editors have explained this phenomenon. It is much easier to critique someone else’s work than evaluate your own essay. When you look at someone’s paper, you are more critical. To evaluate your own paper critically, you need to look at it from a different perspective. Do not worry if you cannot be as critical as you want during editing your first paper. Remember that practice makes perfect! Just practice editing essays and you will never get a bad mark!
2. Take a Break after Writing
Avoid this tip if you the deadline is too short, you cannot waste precious time on pauses. However, if you have enough time – do it. Taking a break will help you look on your paper from the different point of view. When you look at your paper with fresh eyes, it is more likely you will notice mistakes, wordiness, awkward phrasing, etc. So go for a walk, listen to music, watch your favorite TV show, chat with friend – just relax! After that, you will be able to edit your paper more ruthless.
3. Read Your Essay Out Loud
Perfectly written papers should sound smooth. What does that mean? It should sound like the writer is speaking aloud but does not get colloquial. To achieve this effect, you just need to read your papers aloud when editing essays. Change everything that sounds illogical or reminds you of robot talks.
4. Be Ruthless
This tip is the hardest one to follow. However, you need to edit your work, remove some words, sentences or even paragraphs. It is like killing your babies, but this mission has to be accomplished if you want to produce a great paper.
We hope that these pieces of advice will be useful for you. Now, you know how to edit your essay, so we believe that you will receive only good grades. If you face some troubles while editing your papers, you can always refer to our blog for some useful tips and strategies.
