When you revise sentences, you focus on effectiveness; when you edit, you check for correctness.

Some writers handle sentence-level revisions directly at the computer, experimenting on-screen with a variety of possible improvements. Other writers prefer to print out a hard copy of the draft and mark it up before making changes in the file.

Here is a rough-draft paragraph as one student edited it on-screen for a variety of sentence-level problems.

ORIGINAL ROUGH DRAFT

Although some cities have found creative ways to improve access to public transportation for physically handicapped passengers, and to fund other programs, there have been problems in our city due to the need to address budget constraints and competing needs. This has led citizens to question how funds are distributed? For example, last year when city officials had to choose between allocating funds for accessible transportation or allocating funds to after school programs, they voted for the after school programs. It is not clear why these are more important.

EDITED PARAGRAPH

REVISED PARAGRAPH

Although some cities have found creative ways to improve access to public transportation for physically handicapped passengers, our city has struggled with budget constraints and competing priorities. The budget crunch has led citizens to question how funds are distributed. For example, last year city officials voted to use available funds to support after-school programs rather than transportation upgrades. It is not clear to some citizens why after-school programs are more important.

The original paragraph was flawed by wordiness, a problem that can be addressed through any number of revisions.

Some of the paragraph’s improvements are not open to debate and must be fixed in any revision.

An important aspect of becoming an effective writer is learning how to identify your grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. An editing log will help you keep a personal list of your common errors and learn the rules to identify and correct the errors.

Creating a personal editing log