An Ultimate Guide to Strengthen Your Writing
What do you know about self-editing?
Self-editing copes with correcting your own mistakes, revising your sentence structure, and sharpening your word selection.
Ideally, you would have an expert editor and writer who mastered these areas, but most students are our own teachers!
Many students struggle to edit their papers, and therefore, they hire a professional editor from essay48.com to get their papers edited.
Editing is a very vital step to the writing procedure. If you try to write a tailor-made first draft, considering everything will put you off, and some fantastic ideas might fall through these holes.
Editing is a unique skill with its own procedures and career paths, just like writing. It is a skill that every person should master. While writing blogs and web content, businessmen also proofread and edit their content to boost their business.
Let’s dive into the entire procedure of self-editing – how to edit your paper when you are not a skilled editor.
Self-editing bullet points – what to look for
Once you have finished your first draft, the next step of self-editing starts. When you are reading your content, you need to consider the following things:
- Grammar and spelling
Did you ever think about the primary difference between proofreading and editing?
Well, proofreading deals with covering the typographical mistakes, whereas editing covers all corrections like spelling and grammar, word choice, format, tone, and a lot more. You can say that proofreading is a mandatory part of editing.
Most often, students search for some valuable tips on how to improve their writing skills and grammar.
- Irrelevant words
A well-crafted content includes only what is needed and nothing else. However, it does not mean that you have to avoid details.
In simple words, you have to remove all the redundancies. For example:
- He works hard in order to succeed.
- He works hard to succeed.
“In order to” is the most common redundancy. Furthermore, it is unnecessary.
- Complex words
Fancy words might confuse your readers, but simple words would allow them to stick to your content. Complex expressions can distract your readers from the central idea; thus, expert writers save those fancy words only when necessary.
Accordingly, it would be best if you used simple and small words in your writing.
Most importantly, you can use top-notch phrases to improve your English writing.
- Clarity
You should write your content in a clear tone as excellent communication occurs when your readers get your message. No matter how poetic language you use, it is useless if your readers do not comprehend it.
While writing your essay, case study, paper, or any content, you have to write as per your readers’ perspectives.
- Passive voice
According to professional writers, using passive voice in your paper comes across as weak. Thus to improve your creative writing skills, you need to write in an active voice tense because it makes the sentence easier to comprehend.
- Repeated words
Avoid using the exact words over and over in your paper. Instead, you need to vary your word selection. If possible, you can benefit from the thesaurus.
However, if you are writing about a specific topic with a particular word, you can use a synonym and alternate it.
It would be best if you do regular English writing exercises to improve your writing.
- Long sentences
Tricky and long sentences make your meaning vague, even when they are grammatically acceptable too. So, if you find a tough and long sentence during the editing phase, you can break it down into two and even three smaller sentences.
- Phrases that a single word can replace
Now, you have an idea that precise writing uses few words; hence look for heavy-weighted phrases that one or two words could replace. For example,
- After thinking all day, Anderson finally made a choice.
- After thinking all day, Anderson finally chose.
The second sentence seems professional as compared to the first.
- Really and very
In the context of unnecessary words, “really” and “very” are not suitable to use. You can use them occasionally when they make a substantial impact, but you should eliminate and replace them in most cases.
- Formatting
Finally, it would help if you double-checked the formatting of your assignment or any other paper is okay. Assignments may have formatting patterns you are not quite familiar with.
While completing your assignment, ensure that you follow all the general formatting rules like standard font and text size, etc.
Additionally, focus on the citations and quotations – APA, Chicago, Oxford, and MLA
styles have different rules for citations.
Four matchless steps to editing your paper
- Know your readers
You have to write for your readers – crafting a college essay for the professor requires different rules and language than writing a letter to a friend.
While editing your work, ask yourself these questions:
- What would my readers think of this paper?
- Will my readers comprehend this content?
- Would my readers like the phrasing in which I wrote?
Asking these questions will enable you to know your audience accurately. On the contrary, if you do not have a specific reader in mind, do not panic then. You can make an imaginary reader showcase your reader.
Professors often tell several practical ways to improve writing skills for students. You should follow them and ask for their guidance if you get stuck with writing issues.
- Read your paper aloud
Several good writers read this first draft aloud so that they get a new perspective on the topic. Reading paper aloud is better than reading quietly because it triggers many portions of your mind.
Therefore, it can provide you with fresh insight.
- Sleep on it
Writing your first draft is a grueling task; thus, you need some rest to cool off before coming to self-editing. It would be best to get some hours of sleep and then edit your paper with a fresh start.
Anyhow, if you have a challenging routine, at least take a small break for a couple of hours.
- Using online editing resources
If all these steps seem overwhelming, do not worry because there is good news for you. You do not have to edit your paper alone. There are many free online editing resources to lift your burden.
These editing pieces of software provide you with writing suggestions on both spelling and grammar.
