If you don’t know how to revise an essay, you have arrived at the right place. In this article, we will explain what essay revising is, as well as give you the steps to revise an essay the right way. In addition, you will get valuable tips, tricks and advice from our experienced academic writers and editors. After reading this article, which should not take you more than 20 minutes, you will know everything there is to know about revising all kinds of academic papers.
What is the best way for the student to revise the essay? What are the best revision strategies for essays? These are just two of the questions our article tries to answer. Truth be told, students can lose a lot of points simply because they don’t know how to revise their own work. Knowing how to revise an academic paper can make the difference between a B and an A+. Yes, it really is that important!
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What Is Essay Revising?
OK, but what does it mean to revise an essay? Basically, essay revising is the process of critically analyzing your ideas (and the way you present them in the paper) and editing certain parts. Here are some of the things you can do during the revision:
- You may want to delete phrases that seem unnecessary.
- You can choose to add some content to paragraphs that are too short.
- You can rephrase sentences that are not clear or that are not correctly written.
- You can check punctuation and grammar.
- You can check the paragraph length.
- You may want to analyze the flow of ideas and organize them in a logical manner.
- You may also need to edit the introduction and the conclusion.
- Finally, you should take a look at the thesis statement and make sure it is strong and clear.
But how do you revise an essay without making it shorter? Don’t be afraid to make your paper a bit shorter; it probably won’t make any difference. During the revision process, you can add, delete or move sentences around. You can also rearrange the paragraphs if the current structure does not make sense. You must polish your paper and bring it as close to perfection as possible. Believe us, professors really appreciate students who take the time to edit and revise their work.
Importance Of Revising Essays
But why is revising essays so important? Most students think of themselves as experienced academic writers. They have written a dozen or so essays and one or two research papers already, so what can go wrong? Well, the truth is that even experienced academic writers who do this for a living make mistakes. Perhaps it’s a run-on sentence or two. Or perhaps some of the facts and names got mixed up. These are mistakes that will get you penalized. Here are the main reasons why you should learn how to revise properly right away:
- Revising will definitely make your essay better. Even if you make slight changes, the end result will be better than the original version.
- You can quickly catch mistakes related to factual information. Even if you believe something to be true, research may contradict you.
- Going over your paper gives you the opportunity to fix run-on sentences, find and fix incorrect pronouns, remove dangling modifier errors, and fix punctuation issues.
- You can make the introduction a lot more intriguing and the conclusion stronger.
- By reading your work, you will quickly notice awkward sentences and poor transitioning between paragraphs.
- You will find words that don’t quite convey the meaning you want them to convey. You should replace them with powerful synonyms.
- You will sometimes find certain statements that are not supported by research. You can either remove them or back them up with data from authoritative sources.
- Finally, you will most likely find errors in formatting citations, references and quotations. These can be easily fixed.
As you can see, knowing how to revise a paper the right way can greatly improve your chances of getting a top grade. Now that you know why learning how to revise essay is important, it’s time to get to the core of our article: the guide. Don’t worry; it’s not difficult at all. You can use the steps in our guide for any type of paper (including research papers, theses and even dissertations).
So, How Do You Revise an Essay?
Ready to learn how to revise an essay in college? While there are many methods you can use, we believe that certain steps are absolutely mandatory. Here is what you need to do:
- The revision of an essay begins with the introduction. Make sure your intro begins with a “hook” (a statement that catches your reader’s interest). Include your thesis after the hook and use the rest of the introduction to provide some background information (or present the research questions). Make a smooth transition to the first body paragraph.
- Make sure you have at least 3 body paragraphs – all correctly indented. Aim for less than 100 words per paragraph. Normally, you would start the paragraph with a statement and use the rest of the paragraph to support it. Make a transition to the next paragraph.
- Check the conclusion. It should restate your thesis and summarize the most important ideas in your paper. Make it clear how your research supports your thesis. You can end the conclusion with a call to action, but it is not mandatory.
- Now that the structure looks good, it’s time to focus on sentences and words. Read your essay from start to finish and break long sentences into shorter ones. Correct every grammar, spelling or punctuation mistake you find.
- If you find a paragraph that needs some more content, add it. If you have a long paragraph, eliminate unnecessary information.
- At this point, your essay should be well structured and should not contain any grammar, spelling or punctuation mistakes. It’s time to look at the formatting. Make sure you format the paper exactly as you have been instructed by your professor. Indentation, line spacing, paragraph spacing, font style, font size, page margins – all are very important.
- Check your citations and quotations. Make sure they are formatted properly. Also make sure each one is included in the References section. You must follow the format set forth in the stylebook.
- Check all the references to make sure they are from authoritative sources. Primary and secondary sources are best, so do not use Wikipedia or similar websites.
- Read your paper one last time and fix the mistakes you may have overlooked. Congratulations! Your paper is, at last, ready for submission.
Tips, Tricks And Advice To Help Revise Your Essay
Now that you know how to revise and edit an essay, we can help you with some of the best tips for revising essays. These tips, tricks and advice should make it easy for you to revise academic papers in record time and do a wonderful job:
- All your ideas need to be organized in a logical order. This is important because otherwise your readers may get confused and you may lose points.
- Everything in your paper should be relevant and should be there to support your thesis. If some parts are unnecessary, don’t be afraid to delete them.
- It’s a very good idea to give your paper to your friends or family to read and ask them for their feedback. You’ll be amazed by how many things you’ve missed during the revision.
- Make sure that everything you have used to write the paper is listed in the References section. Quotes and citations need an entry there as well.
- If your professor has given you some guidelines (like font size, font and line spacing, indentation, and so on), ensure you stick to them throughout the paper.
- Are all verb forms correct? Do they agree with their subjects? These are some of the most common mistakes students make in their essays.
- Don’t rely on any facts (even if they are common knowledge) without checking them. In addition, do not make any false assumptions.
- Carefully read all sentences and make sure they are not too long. Long sentences can easily be broken in smaller ones that are a lot easier to read and understand.
- Your statements should support your thesis. However, it’s not wrong to discuss opposing points of view.
- If you are want to use technical terms, explain these terms the first time you use them. This also applies to abbreviations.
Who Can Help Me Revise My Assignment?
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Essay Revision FAQ
When it comes to essay revision, things can sometimes get a bit complicated. Various academic writing standards (APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, etc.) have different requirements. We will try to answer the most frequently asked questions below:
Q: How long should my paragraphs be?
A: When revising the overall structure of your essay, it’s important to organize your paper correctly. Lengthy paragraphs are just as bad as very short ones. The perfect paragraph is anywhere from 60 to 100 words long.
Q: Should I adhere to every guideline in the stylebook?
A: Yes. You can find a stylebook for every academic writing format with relative ease using Google, so make sure you read it carefully. Your professor will penalize you if you don’t adhere to its guidelines.
Q: Can I base my writing on my own opinions?
A: Yes and no. Unless you are an expert in your field (which you probably are not), you should refrain from basing your writing on your own opinions. In other words, do not present opinions as facts, especially when you can’t back them up with credible research data.
Q: How do I know my conclusion is written correctly?
A: The perfect conclusion restates the thesis of the paper, reiterates the major arguments discussed in the paper, and them wraps everything up with a strong call to action. And whatever you do, do not add new information in the conclusion. If you’re struggling writing a perfect conclusion, you can get essay assignment help to complete your essay.
