The Revision Process

Below are some important principles related to the revision process.

Leave yourself enough time to change your mind. In the words of the poet T.S. Eliot, allow time
"for a hundred indecisions / And for a hundred visions and revisions." The degree to which this is possible will vary depending on circumstances.

Distance yourself from your work. Put your writing project aside for several hours or a day. Since writing is often conducted under some form of duress, you are well advised to follow popular wisdom and "sleep on it." When you come back to your work with fresh eyes, you will no doubt see things you could not see before when you were too close to it. Revision literally means "looking again."

Read your work aloud. Your ears will sometimes catch what your eyes do not. If you find that you cannot follow the logic of a particular discussion, or that you stumble over phrasing and sentence structure, consider what it is that hinders you. Perhaps these parts need reworking.

Read your work backwards. Because, as every writer knows, it is possible to reread your work several times and still overlook seemingly obvious errors, it is sometimes best to read an essay backwards, word by word. This forces you to pay attention to individual words rather than their relationship together, and will allow for the easy detection of spelling errors. Otherwise, your brain will overlook these errors in favour of what is being said, as in the example below, a text widely circulated on the Internet:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

(There is no conclusive evidence linking this message to psycholinguists at Cambridge University).

Have someone else read over your work. Others are in a better position to detect errors that you may have overlooked many times.

Imagine what it is like to be someone else reading your work. Formulate a checklist based on the following criteria:

	Alternate between belief and doubt when evaluating your claims.
	Examine the supporting evidence: is it relevant? convincing?
	Review the structure: is it organized and coherent?
	Make an outline of the main points, paying special attention to topic sentences.
	Revisit the thesis: is it what is argued?
	Does the work achieve its purpose?
	Are the introduction and conclusion effective?

Cut and paste. Using a word processor, save your work as another file and then cut and paste your paragraphs in a different order. This may reveal another more effective pattern of organization. Using the same technology, you may also try omitting certain ideas and including others. For those without access to a computer, this would mean marking up your first draft with a red pen, making notes to yourself, drawing arrows from one key idea to another. You may even cut your paper into pieces and rearrange the paragraphs or passages on your desk. In either case, the idea is to experiment with alternative methods of organizing your discussion.

Most readers are more interested in the content of your work (what is said) than in the form (how it is said). As you revise your work, proportion your time according to the following hierarchy (descending in order of importance):

Thesis
Evidence
Argumentation
Structure and organization
Paragraphs, sentences, words, title.

Know thyself. Know your strengths and weaknesses and revise accordingly. If you know you are prone to making certain mistakes, diligently read through your work checking for those particular errors.