Useful Tips How To Edit Your Essay Step By Step

How is it possible to become a better writer? How can you start avoiding the conflicting paragraphs and weasel-worded phrases in your manuscripts, which add more unclearness to the texts and lower their general quality? These questions arise in the head of every writer sooner or later. Everybody, who deals with writing in his everyday life, knows that even a good text may be turned into a brilliant one, which is free from both obvious and hidden errors. It is natural for every writer to strive for perfection and editing of your own texts may improve your writing skills cardinally. 

Are you just a newcomer to the pencraft? Aren’t you experienced enough to put into practice all the laws, which are well-known to your more skilled and experienced comrades? Effective editing may make any text several times better. It doesn’t mean that you need to hire a professional editor to check your paper and improve its general appearance. You may take this role on yourself and eradicate all the shortcomings, which you have ignored earlier. Just spend 20 minutes on your text rereading and you will notice the great difference between the source text and the improved one then. Hence, if you have already finished your essay writing, don’t hurry to announce that it is ready. Look through it again and make sure that everything about your scribbling is perfect.  

The useful tips, which were prepared by our specialists, will become your guideline to start the process. Go on!

Let’s Start Right Now!

1. If you are not pressed for time, don’t start the editing procedure as soon as you put the last full stop. As you spent a lot of time on it, your alertness will be lowered and your sensation of the text will be dulled. If you fall on your manuscript rereading at once, there is a great risk that you won’t be able to notice all the mistakes and eradicate all the contradictory moments, which your text contains. Wait for some time and start editing then. Begin with the general structure of your essay. Are your arguments consecutive enough to bring the reader to the logical conclusion? Did you succeed in catching your readers’ interest from the very first phrase? Improve the overall structure of your essay if you found any discrepancies in it. You are free to paraphrase the certain paragraphs and phrases, delete some of them or interchange their positions. Edit too long sentences. They are really able to make your readers bored. Any long phrase may be expressed just by two or three words. Try to do this!

If any copy/paste manipulations were made by you, don’t forget to reread the text from the very beginning again. Maybe, some new errors were made here again.

1. Do you have a habit to consult with a thesaurus while writing and replace the simple words with more complicated ones? You are under a risk to choose not the appropriate synonym! Be careful while doing this and try to use complex words as rare as possible to not make your text too pompous.
2. Duplicating one and the same thought for several times is a common practice for all the writers. Editing is the best remedy for it. Look through your text, find the repetitions, and delete them until your teacher does this. Don’t try to discuss one and the same idea for too long too. Such a practice may explode the validity of your argument. Being laconic is the best quality for a successful writer. The repetition of one and the same word within one paragraph sounds awkwardly too. Rephrase the sentences by using the alternatives.
3. Don’t rely on any spellcheck systems too much! None of the computer checking programs is able to pick up all the typos. A lot of misspellings may be left unnoticed. The best method to catch all the mistakes is to print your essay out and mark all the errors with the red pen. Then correct them on the computer. Any pro will confirm that it is much easier to read a printed text rather than its electronic version.
4. You are not the only one, who uses plenty of unnecessary words in his writing. The words, which add no sense to the text, must be deleted! As soon as you get rid of them you will see that your document didn’t become worse. Using of weasel words is another problem. A writer usually uses them to hide the weak sides of his document. Passive constructions such as ‘It was said’, numerical vagueness like ‘Many people say’, adverbs ‘probably’, ‘maybe’ and others make your writing weaker. Paraphrase the sentences to remove them and you will notice that your text will become even stronger without them.
5. If you tend to put too many or too few commas in your text, try to control yourself. None of these extremities is needed in a quality academic paper. The main rule for you to remember is to put commas only where you pause while speaking aloud.
6. Academic paper should contain as little exclamation marks as possible. It will be better if there is none of them in your text. Each of your exclamation makes a reader take your text not seriously.
7. Don’t forget that some words have more than one correct spelling. Be careful while choosing the language on the computer. UK English spelling differs from US one. Your computer autocorrecting may play a low-down trick with you.
8. If you let yourself use quotations, don’t forget to say where they’ve come from. Bibliography with all the mentioned books should be added to your paper too.
9. Fonts, underlining, italics, or anything like that are able to make your essay look either professional or messed up. Your paper’s appearance is the first thing, which strikes your reader’s eyes. Keep to the chosen formatting throughout your text.

The World Is Your Oyster

Editing is an interesting process and when you finish it and see the ideal writing in front of you, you may be sure that you will be proud of yourself. Follow our counsels and you will see that trying yourself as an editor is not such an impossible mission as it may seem. If something goes wrong, don’t worry! EssayCorrector.org is always next to you and if any troubles arise, our best specialists are always ready to lend you the needed assistance. Just believe in yourself and everything will be OK!