Revision and editing for a research project

When you have considered your reviewers’ responses and your own analysis, you can turn to revising and editing the draft of your research project. Many writers prefer to print their text and then revise first on paper, but you can approach rewriting your draft in any way that makes sense to you. However you revise, be sure to save copies of each draft. Begin with the major changes, such as adding content or reorganizing. Then turn to sentence-level problems and word choice.

Make sure you’ve included a citation in your text for every quotation, paraphrase, summary, statistic, visual, and media file that you have used. If you are required to follow a formal documentation style, such as MLA, APA, Chicago, or CSE style, follow it consistently.

Edit your draft for grammar, usage, spelling, punctuation, and mechanics when you have completed your revision. If you are keeping an editing checklist, use it to focus your efforts on issues you have had before or mistakes you tend to overlook.

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Your list of sources

Once your final draft and source materials are in place, follow the guidelines of your documentation style to prepare a list of works cited for MLA style, a list of references for APA style or for CSE style, a bibliography for Chicago style, or another list of sources as needed. Create an entry for each source used, double-checking your work to make sure that you have listed every source mentioned in your draft and (unless you are listing all the sources you consulted) that you have not listed any sources not cited. Your word-processing program can help you alphabetize and format lists of sources as well as prepare endnotes and footnotes.

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The final draft of your research project

Your final rough draft may look very rough indeed, so your next step is to create a final, perfectly clean copy. You will submit this version, which represents all your work and effort, to your instructor. At this point, run the spell checker, but don’t stop there. To make sure that this final version puts your best foot forward, proofread extremely carefully. It’s best to work with a hard copy because reading onscreen often leads to missed typos. Read the copy aloud for content and for the flow of the argument, making sure you haven’t mistakenly deleted words, lines, or whole sections. Then read the copy backward from the last sentence to the first, looking for small mistakes such as punctuation problems or missing words.

Once you are sure your draft is free of errors, check the design one last time to be sure that your final copy is as attractive and readable as possible.

After your manuscript preparation and proofreading are complete, celebrate your achievement: your research and hard work have produced a project that you can, and should, take pride in.

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