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Drafts and Revisions

Rarely does the first draft of a paper reflect your best work. A proper approach to revision and rewriting can help you clarify your thoughts, craft well-structured sentences and catch stray errors. Depending on the complexity of your paper, this process can also enable you to present your thoughts in clear, flowing prose that is easier for your reader to digest.

If time permits, it is always good practice to take a break after you’ve written a first draft. Work on some other homework, take a walk, or, if need be, just sleep on it. Approach your writing with fresh eyes and a brain that is not fatigued with the minutiae of your subject; this can lead you to some surprising and helpful realizations. For instance, something you may have thought to be entirely clear could be confusing on second glance.

As you begin to edit and revise, you may find it helpful to work in a certain order rather than attacking all aspects of the entire paper at once.

Start with big ideas and resist the urge to tinker with vocabulary at first.
- Does your paper meet the requirements of the assignment?
- Is your paper consistently on track with those requirements?
Examine your thesis statement again.
- Does it take a specific position? Do you still agree with it?
- Does it require some modification?
Next, review your introduction.
- Does it do a good job of informing the reader of what’s to come next?
Spend a major portion of your time reviewing your supporting paragraphs.
- Does the body of the paper contain information in equal proportions?
- Does it truly support the position you took in your thesis statement?
- Does information flow well between paragraphs?
- Is the paper as a whole well-organized, or should some information be shifted to a more effective place in the paper?
Check all of the evidence and research you use to support your primary and secondary claims.
- Is your supporting data factual and well-supported?
- Have you cited all your sources? Are the citations in accordance with the expected style guide?
Lastly, examine your conclusion.
- Does it restate the paper’s ideas in different, but compelling, language?
- Does it tie the paper together? Does it leave the reader clearly understanding your position?

After these big ideas are carefully thought through, the nitty-gritty editorial work follows:

Check your spelling, grammatical construction and punctuation
Ensure tense and subject/verb agreement, and rewrite passive verb construction
Check to see whether transitional phrasing is repeated too often, and eliminate redundant text

When you are confident you have improved your paper as much as possible, it’s not a bad idea to ask a peer to quickly review it before you turn it in. Fresh eyes can spot errors that the author immersed in the topic won’t see.