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It’s important to remember that writing is a process, not a product. For every finished, polished, solid essay, there were multiple drafts that developed towards that finished piece. Those drafts are necessary for the final piece, so you can’t skip any of the steps and still hope to have a successful final version.
After you complete a draft, you’ll need to:
An essay that’s turned in with errors that could have been fixed through editing, revising, or proofreading can cause you to lose credibility with your reader. Therefore, think about these final stages as the quality control of your writing process.
The first of the final stages of the writing process will be revising. This is a different stage than editing, which will look at the sentences themselves to assess how well they articulate the argument.
Revising is also different from proofreading, where you’ll check your writing to make sure that it follows the rules. There’s no sense in doing those two steps, editing and proofreading, if you’re going to take out, add in, or otherwise change all those sentences themselves.
Revising is the stage when you think about the big picture of your arguments, assessing your overall argumentation, support, evidence, assertions, etc.
In this step, you might:
Revision often involves getting feedback from others. In a workplace setting, the feedback might come from your manager or a colleague. In college, feedback might come from a peer (especially one you consider to be a good writer). But another good source of feedback is anyone who represents your target audience, who is an expert on the content in the article, or who has insights that will be valuable to your revision process.
EXAMPLE
If you are writing an orientation guide for new employees at a company you’ve worked at for several years, you might want feedback from a recent hire to help identify areas where your familiarity with the company norms and lingo have led to sentences or paragraphs that are not clear to people without that knowledge.EXAMPLE
If you are writing a software training manual, you would want feedback from a developer or expert to make sure all the details are correct and represent best practices.EXAMPLE
If you are writing a guide on accommodations when you yourself do not have a disability, it is a good idea to ask a person who is disabled and more sensitive to the subtle connotations or bias the writing might reveal. Readers like this are sometimes called "sensitivity readers," but you can simply think of them as an expert on the topic you are writing about.Asking for feedback is asking others for their time and expertise, so be mindful of this in addressing and responding to feedback. It can be hard to set your feelings aside if the comments are critical, but knowing how to take criticism is also part of the writing process and will ultimately help you with both the immediate goal of writing the current assignment and the long-term goal of becoming a better writer.
Once you’ve revised and have a draft that you’re sure contains all the info that you want and no info that you don’t want, you’re ready for editing to make sure that the sentences are pulling their weight.
When revising, you focused on re-seeing and rethinking the whole argument’s ideas, support, and organization. Here, you’re going to zoom in a little more closely, just looking at how those ideas are expressed in language.
In other words, this is where you get to think about how your words are working—making sure that they mean what you intend and match the overall tone you want. Editing is also where you assess how your transitions connect ideas in sentences and paragraphs to create a smooth flow of ideas.
During this stage, you’ll want to check that your essay has all the elements of style:
You’ve now got to do a final check to make sure that everything in your essay is where and how it should be. Proofreading is where you zoom in your closest to check for the smallest errors in grammar and mechanics.
This is separate from revising and editing, because this is where you’re making sure that your text is ready for primetime. You’re not adding anything new or fundamentally changing the way things are expressed; you’re just making sure everything is clean and correct.
Again, remember that writing is a process, not a product. Thus, you might notice something to revise or edit while you’re proofreading, and that’s fine. Go ahead and fix any issues that you notice, but do focus on the small nitty-gritty details of grammar and mechanics.
When you proofread, you should look for:
After proofreading, your essay is ready to be seen by the world.
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