C3-c: Revising and editing sentences
When you revise sentences, you focus on effectiveness; when you edit, you check for correctness. Much of this book offers advice on revising sentences for clarity and on editing them for grammar, punctuation, and mechanics.
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.
The original paragraph was too wordy, a problem that can be addressed through any number of revisions.
Some of the improvements do not involve choice and must be fixed in any revision. The hyphen in after-school programs is necessary; a noun must be substituted for the pronoun these in the last sentence; and the question mark in the second sentence must be changed to a period.
Creating a personal editing log
You can use an editing log to keep a personal list of your common errors and learn the rules to correct the errors. To begin your log, review all the grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors identified in your last piece of writing—and then answer the following questions.
- What errors do you make most frequently?
- What pattern do you see in these errors?
- What rule(s) do you need to learn to correct the errors?
- Where in your handbook will you find the rules?
Sample editing log page
Original sentence
Athletes who use any type of biotechnology give themselves an unfair advantage they should be banned from competition.
Edited sentence
Rule or pattern applied
To edit a run-on sentence, use a comma and a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or). See section G6-a.