Improving the Draft: Revising, Editing, and Proofreading

378

Start improving your draft by reflecting on what you have written thus far:

Revise your draft.

If your readers are having difficulty with your draft, or if you think there is room for improvement, try some of the strategies listed in the Troubleshooting Guide that follows. It can help you fine-tune your presentation of the genre’s basic features:

A TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE

Click the Troubleshooting Guide to download.

A Well-Presented Subject My readers find my subject vague or do not think it has been identified clearly.

  • Identify the subject, name the author or director, and give the title.

  • Describe the subject — summarize what it is about, cite statistics that establish its importance, or give examples to make it concrete.

  • Consider adding visuals — photographs, tables, or charts — to help clarify the subject.

My readers aren’t sure what kind of subject it is.

  • Classify the subject by naming the genre or category it fits into.

  • Refer to reviews or reviewers of subjects of this kind.

  • Compare your subject to other, better-known subjects of the same kind.
A Well-Supported Judgment My readers don’t find my thesis or overall judgment clear.

  • State your thesis early in the essay.

  • Clarify the language in your thesis statement to indicate your overall judgment.

  • Consider whether your judgment is arguable (not simply a matter of taste). If you cannot provide reasons and support for it, then your judgment probably isn’t arguable; ask your instructor about modifying your judgment or writing about a different subject.

379

My readers aren’t convinced that my evaluation is reasonable and/or persuasive.

  • Clarify the criteria on which you base your judgment, and justify them by citing authorities or reviews of similar subjects, making comparisons, or explaining why your criteria are appropriate and perhaps preferable to criteria readers may be more familiar with.

  • Add support for your reasons by, for example, quoting respected experts or research studies; providing facts or statistics; giving specific examples; or quoting, summarizing, or paraphrasing the subject of your evaluation.

My readers don’t understand my evaluation.

  • Review the way you present your evaluation to make sure that you have explained it clearly and that you state your supporting reasons clearly.

  • Outline your argument to be sure that it is clearly organized; if it is not, try rearranging parts or strengthening connections.

  • Make sure that you have cut out any irrelevant content, and revise to strengthen the connections among your ideas.
An Effective Response to Objections and Alternative Judgments My readers raise objections I haven’t considered or find fault with my response to alternative judgments.

  • If readers raise only a minor concern, you may be able to ignore or dismiss it. (Not every objection requires a response.)

  • If readers raise a serious objection, one that undermines your argument, try to refute it by showing that it’s not based on widely held or appropriate criteria or that it’s based on a misunderstanding of your argument or the subject.

  • If readers raise a serious objection that you can’t refute, acknowledge it but try to demonstrate that it doesn’t invalidate your judgment.

My readers have proposed alternative judgments or have found fault with how I handle alternatives.

  • Address the alternative judgments directly by conceding good or bad qualities of the subject that others focus on, but emphasize that you disagree about the overall value of the subject.

  • Point out where you and your readers agree on criteria but disagree on how well the subject meets the criteria.

  • Where you disagree with readers on criteria, try to justify the standards you are applying by citing authorities or establishing your own authority.

380

A Clear, Logical Organization My readers find my essay confusing or hard to follow.

  • Outline your essay to review its structure, and move, add, or delete sections as necessary to strengthen coherence.

  • Consider adding a forecasting statement early in your essay.

  • Repeat your key terms or use synonyms of key terms to keep readers oriented.

  • Check to see that you introduce your reasons clearly in topic sentences.

  • Check to be sure that you provide appropriate transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections of your essay, especially at points where your readers have trouble following your argument.

  • Review your opening and closing paragraphs to be sure that your overall judgment is clear and appropriately qualified.

Edit and proofread your draft.

Our research indicates that particular errors occur often in essays that justify an evaluation: incomplete and illogical comparisons, and short, choppy sentences. The following guidelines will help you check your essay for these common errors.

Making Complete, Logical, and Grammatically Correct Comparisons

The Problem In essays that justify an evaluation, writers often engage in comparison — showing, for example, that one film is stronger than another, a new recording is inferior to an earlier one, or one restaurant is better than another. When comparisons are expressed incompletely, illogically, or incorrectly, however, the point of the comparison can be dulled or lost completely.

The Correction Reread your comparisons, checking for completeness, logic, and correctness.

A Note on Grammar and Spelling Checkers

These tools can be helpful, but do not rely on them exclusively to catch errors in your text: Spelling checkers cannot catch misspellings that are themselves words, such as to for too. Grammar checkers miss some problems, sometimes give faulty advice for fixing problems, and can flag correct items as wrong. Use these tools as a second line of defense after your own (and, ideally, another reader’s) proofreading and editing efforts.

A comparison is complete if two terms are introduced, and the relationship between them is clearly expressed:

A comparison is logical if the terms compared are parallel (and therefore comparable):

Note that different from is correct; different than, though commonly used, is incorrect:

381

Combining Sentences

The Problem When writers justify an evaluation, they generally present their subject in some detail — defining it, describing it, placing it in some context. Inexperienced writers often present such details one after another, in short, choppy sentences. These sentences can be difficult or irritating to read, and they provide the reader with no help in determining how the different details relate to one another.

The Correction Combine sentences to make your writing more readable and to clarify the relationships among ideas. Two common strategies for sentence combining involve converting full sentences into appositive phrases (a noun phrase that renames the noun or pronoun that immediately precedes it) or verbal phrases (phrases using words derived from verbs that function as adjectives, adverbs, or nouns). Consider the following example:

From three separate sentences, this writer smoothly combines details about the “different impression” into a single sentence, using an appositive phrase (“a comic or perhaps even pathetic impression”) and a verbal phrase (“based on the boy’s attempts to dress up like a real westerner”).

Here are two additional examples of the first strategy (conversion into an appositive phrase):

Finally, here are two additional examples of the second strategy (conversion into a verbal phrase):