Revising Your Paper

Revising Your Paper LESSON 8 A BETTER WRITING RIGHT NOW ... 

BETTER WRITING RIGHT NOW LESSON 8 Revising Your Paper... 

Remember, you are asking for others impressions of your paper. It s not academically honest to have others rewrite or revise your paper for you, but you might ask them these types of questions about your paper ... 

A research paper may seem like a heavy burden to you in the beginning, but it can actually be an exciting project. It s an opportunity for you to learn about atopic you are interested in and to share the result of your research with others. In this lesson, you ll learn the basic steps to writing a research paper finding and researching atopic, drafting your paper, and revising your paper. 

Finally, in regard to meaning and content, pay careful attention to the end of your paper and your conclusion. Now that you have done aU this work and are thoroughly knowledgeable about your topic, writing your conclusion should be much easier. Your conclusion, like your introduction—which included your thesis statement—is the second most important part of your paper. After all, your conclusion is the last thing your reader will see. What final impression do you want your readers to have about your work and subject matter Take this time as you revise to rewrite your conclusion. Make it perfect and look over... 

Revising a large work that has taken a while to write can seem like a daunting and unpleasant task. How do you revise a paper that has taken so many weeks to write Break the process down into manageable pieces, work slowly and systematically, and have fun. If you work on your paper in sections, one piece at a time, your final draft will emerge all by itself before your very eyes. 

Summarize your main point. Write what you most want to say in as simple language as you can. This might be as easy as revising your thesis statement or working on your favorite point in the paper. 

So you ve written at least one draft of your paper. You re feeling pretty happy with the result. What s next This lesson will show you how to evaluate what you ve written and make improvements. It will explain the revising process and give you tips on making your paper the best it can be. 

Everyone has his or her own method for revising a paper. As you become a more experienced writer, you will develop ways that work for you. Here are the basic steps involved in revising the content of your paper. 

Read yoru- paper very carefully and very critically as if you were the intended audience. Sometimes, it s helpful to read your paper aloud. This is the time to judge what the paper says. As you read, ask yourself the questions from the Content Revision Checklist. 

IT S USUALLY EASIER to read your work critically if you allow some time to pass in between the drafting and the revising phases. It s very difficult to see the flaws in a paper that you have just written. Make sure you begin writing early enough to allow some time to pass before you begin revising the paper. 

Decide what needs to be done. You may decide to write an entirely new draft, if, for example, your paper does not fulfill your assignment. Or, you may decide that the draft you have can be easily fixed with some minor revisions. 

Choose a draft of one of your own papers. Then, use the Content Revision Checklist on page 75 to evaluate your paper and revise one of the paragraphs. 

Finally, just because someone tells you to make a change in your paper, doesn t mean you need to make that change. Before you modify your paper based on someone else s feedback, make sure that the revisions meet your goals for the paper. 

In the last lesson, you learned how to look at your paper as a whole and revise the content. In this lesson, you will learn how to look at the paragraphs in your paper. You ll learn to look for two main things focus and organization. 

Start thinking about your responses. You might jot down your ideas about each question or sketch a quick outline on scratch paper. Plan your answers wisely because you will probably have little or even no time to revise your essays. Make sure you address each part of each question. 

Don t try to write an entire research paper in one evening. You ll want to write your paper ahead of time, so you have plenty of time away from it before you begin revising. 

Refer to Section III for checklists and guidelines for revising a paper. Because research papers generally count as a major portion of a course s grade, you may choose to revise your research paper more than once. 

If you currently have a working thesis statement you have written in response to an assignment in your composition class, try sketching out an outline or a plan for the major ideas you wish to include. After you write a draft, underline the topic sentences in your body paragraphs. Do your topic sentences directly support your thesis If you find that they do not clearly support your thesis, you must decide if you need to revise your draft s organization or whether you have, in fact, discovered a new, and possibly better, subject to write about. If the latter is true, you ll need to redraft your essay so that your readers will not be confused by a paper that announces one subject but discusses another. (See Chapter 5 for more information on revising your drafts.)... 

If you are handwriting your first drafts, always write on one side of your paper only, in case you want to cut and tape together portions of drafts or you want to experiment with interchanging parts of a particular draft. (If you have written on both sides, you may have to recopy the parts of your essay you want to save your time is better spent creating and revising.)... 

When you do return to your draft, don t try to look at all the parts of your paper, from ideas to organization to mechanics, at the same time. Trying to resee everything at once is rarely possible and will only overload and frustrate you. It may cause you to overlook some important part of your paper that needs your full attention. Overload can also block your creative ideas. Therefore, instead of trying to revise an entire draft in one swoop, break your revising process into a series of smaller, more manageable steps. Here is a suggested process ... 

An extremely important step is to check the specific requirements of the publication you have targeted and follow them. Most publications require revisions of manuscripts that are not in their requested format. Thus, not following a publication s requirements can delay publication and make more work for you. Finally, your paper will be peer-reviewed, so a good idea is to pay attention to the aspects that the reviewers will be considering. Chapter 10 presents the opinions of many reviewers. 

Save your drafts. Whether they re on paper or on the computer, keep a copy of every version of your essay. (That means, on the computer, you will need to make a copy of your draft into a new document before revising.) You may find that an idea you thought you weren t going to use will have a place in your essay after all. 

On a separate sheet of paper or on your computer, revise one of the example paragraphs in the lying with silence essay to provide more information and specific details. Expand the example until you have two complete paragraphs. 

On a separate sheet of paper or on your computer, revise the conclusion to the lying with silence essay. 

To edit your essay effectively, you ll need to read each paragraph a number of times, paying careful attention to your sentences and the words that comprise them. While some students edit well on the computer, many others work better on a hard copy. Unlike revising, which entails the possible reworking of large parts of your essay, editing is a word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence task. Taking pen to paper may help you focus more closely on the pieces that make up your essay, rather than the work as a whole. 

The word processor has facilitated writing because of the ease of revising text. Word processing is a transferable skill valuable beyond the immediate requirements of your chemistry course. Using a word processor should improve your writing skills and speed because you can create, check and change your text on the screen before printing it as hard copy on paper. Once entered and saved, multiple uses can be made of a piece of text with little effort. 

Are you trying to be too clever Your first sentence doesn t have to be earth-shattering in content or particularly smart in style. A short statement of fact or a definition is fine. If there will be time for revision, get your ideas down on paper and revise grammar, content and order later. 

Your course tutor is likely to give you details of exam structure and timing well beforehand, so that you can plan your revision the course handbook and past papers (if available) can provide further useful details. Check with your tutor that the nature of the exam has not changed before you consult past papers. 

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