What makes an essay or a research paper a great project that deserves an A+?
While it’s true that some undergrads are naturally gifted with a great command of the language, you might be surprised to know that a lot of prominent writers tend to produce their first drafts that are as poor as the ones you write. Their works contain half-finished sentences, scattered ideas, poor grammar, and loads of typos.
What makes you a good writer is usually your ability to review your written work and edit it to turn a mess of words into something meaningful. Whether you’re a college student about to revise your essay, or it is your blog that you’d like to take to the next level, it is important to enhance your self-editing skills.
Below, we offer some of the simplest recommendations on how college and university students can improve their editing skills.
Some Key Points To Improve Editing Skill
1. Remember that it takes time to edit
Let’s face it, we never have enough time. It can be quite hard to hold off on submitting your essay or book review, especially when you’re hoping for the highest scores. Make sure to understand that editing is a must and that it takes time to edit and proofread your piece to make it perfect. When it’s time to spend an hour or two to polish up your paper, keep in mind that the process of editing comes with a range of great benefits:
- Your professor won’t be frustrated that you made obvious mistakes
- You will improve the quality of your writing
- Your readers will be happy to deal with the text that is easy to understand
- Your writing will get more convincing and credible
2. Do a read-through before you focus on details
When you’re done with the writing part and ready to proceed to the editing stage, read through the entire work before you fix anything. This first read will help you see a bigger picture more clearly, check the consistency of your writing style, and detect all possible omissions. Make sure to read your paper from A to Z before you rewrite it.
3. Focus on something else before the editing session
Well, let’s face it, students usually skip this part because they simply have no time. It is important to give yourself both the space and time to edit your work. When you’re done with the writing part, you are still in the whirlpool of what you have just written – your brain is 100% tired. When you’re fatigued or close to your written ideas, it can be hard to recognize the mistakes.
Find the best time for editing. For some students, it can be the morning time, when you’re full of energy and your brain is not full of information that you deal with during the day. As a rule, you may need a 24 hours pause after the process of writing to be able to take a fresh look at your work and edit it.
4. Read your paper out loud
When you do this, you will be able to detect words and sentences that don’t sound well or are difficult to read. It’s no doubt they made sense when you wrote them. However, when it’s time to read your text out loud, your brain needs some time to comprehend and process the information it sees.
When you read your paper out loud and fix some words and sentences that are hard to comprehend, you boost the quality of your prose and make it easier for your target audience to consume and understand the message you’re trying to convey. After all, that’s what you want.
5. Don’t hesitate to ask for help
Whether you’re too busy with your assignments, or you know that editing isn’t your strong side, it is better to look for some cheap editing company to get professional help from. When you’re done with your search, and you’re sure about your choice, approach the reps of the company with the message like “I need to proofread my work. Can you edit my paper cheap for me?” Qualified online editors will do the best job possible to turn your essay, term paper, or coursework into a masterpiece.
6. Use Grammarly
College students all over the globe use Grammarly as a real lifesaver when it’s time to edit academic works. What is especially good about this online tool is that when you add it to your Chrome browser, it will highlight all the grammatical errors in your essay AND any other text that you may produce inside your browser. Are you texting your friend on Facebook messenger? Or, perhaps, you’re writing in WordPress? That’s when Grammarly can help you. And the best part is that the app is available for free. You can also use the paid version; however, the free plan includes everything you may need to perfect your work.
7. Edit your work in phases
When you’re editing your work, you have to look for many different things – from poor punctuation to bad grammar and style mistakes. It is important that you don’t try to detect all those issues at once. Instead, it is better to use the so-called three-stage approach to the process of editing. As a result, you will search for different things every time you read your paper:
- First of all, ensure to edit for cohesion and content. Take your work and read it highlighting the gaps in information, or thoughts and ideas that don’t work together.
- The second time you read your piece of writing, make sure to work on the structure and format of it. Check if all the paragraphs aren’t wordy. Look for any run-on sentences that blur your main ideas. Make sure you included enough headings to make your paper easy to comprehend. At some point, get back to the key purpose of your work and ensure that the format used in your work supports that purpose. That’s when you can make your work perfectly readable.
- Finally, the third step that you have to take in your editing journey is to search for grammatical errors and typos. At this point, ensure you don’t rely on mechanical spellcheckers only since they won’t help you when it comes to misused words.
Remember that everybody makes mistakes. Even the most talented writers know how important it is to edit their works that include loads of mistakes before they’re polished to perfection.
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