Write With Me #8 - Editing

The first draft is finished! You're all ready to hit that submit button - except not quite. Not yet. You now have to go and edit the work you've done. This is what takes you to that next level.

Now, if you're following the spreadsheet plan it should be looking something like this:

So you can see that you still have the "Editing" row of boxes left unchecked. Now if you've just finished the main writing, and you were pretty good about your predicted timings, you should have a few days left before the deadline. What you do now is put that essay to one side for a couple of days.

I'm serious.

Put that essay to one side and relax, congratulate yourself on getting through that. Do something fun for yourself.

After the couple of days have passed I want you to load up that document, change the background colour, text colour and the font type and size. This actually makes it easier to edit since it now no longer looks like the same words you've been agonising over. These aren't the words you're attached to, this is where you can be brutal.

What Does It Mean To Edit?

Well, firstly you're going to be looking for mistakes. Spelling, places where you've used the wrong names or variations of them, have you got capital letters and commas? All of that stuff.

Next you're going to go through for consistency:

• Are the characters names consistent?

  • Looking at Mephistophilis, Mephistopheles, Mephistophiles and so on... choose one spelling and stick to it

• Is the font type the same all the way through?

• Line spacing the same?

• Is the text justified? (on the drop down menu it's the one that looks like a paragraph with the lines all being the same length)

• Check the margins, header and footer

And then you go through for content...

Editing The Content

This is often the hardest part since you're attached to what you've just written. Or you have no idea what to take out, how to add in more and it all becomes a struggle.

Are there any sections that don't feel as strong to you? That when you were writing you were thinking something along the lines of "yeah this will need to change"? Start there. Look at what you have written and see if you can improve the phrasing, add any evidence to support what you're saying, add in a critic or citation that's needed.

If none of that helps then it might be time to take that sentence or two out.

Don't just delete it though, what you're going to do is take a new word document and paste the sentences in there along with a couple of lines to give context and then a couple lines of explanation on why it didn't work. Never just delete something.

After you've gone through and strengthened the sections you were more anxious about or that didn't feel like they were strong enough you can start with the rest of the essay. Next I look at the parts I felt most confident about writing, chances are I've grown attached to that and don't want to change much.

But, be ruthless. Cut anything unnecessary.

And finally change the font, background and size again and read through. Does it all make sense?

Yes? Put it to one side for another day.

No? Keep editing. Go through and make the changes.

Once you've left it for another day you can do a final read through, and if it all makes sense and there's no errors then you can submit it.

Final Checks

I always do this on the final go:

1. Do I have a cover page?

2. Is my name on it?

3. Is my student number on it?

4. Do I have the lecturer & class info on it?

5. Are all the pages and sections there?

6. Bibliography too?

7. Is it formatted to the uni standards?

8. Do I have a back up just in case?

And you're ready! You're finished with your essay!

Now you can hit that submit button, and reward yourself again.

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Hey! Tara here and thanks for checking out my blog. I update every Tuesday with posts about studying tips, advice and talk about productivity and organisation too. If you want to keep up to date with my latest blog posts I’d love it if you subscribed to this blog.