The Skidmore Guide to Writing

Editing Checklist and Tips

When we edit a draft or revise our papers, we need to read it as a reader would - not as writers who stayed up all night working on it, with our heads still swirling with our own ideas. The following checklist will help you to see your work coolly, objectively, and critically. This page also includes special tips for English Language Learners.

Set Aside Time for the Basics

¤ Review the assignment guidelines carefully. Remember this describes expectations for a successful paper.
¤ Read your draft more than once, with extra time (and sleep) in between readings.
¤ Offer your draft to another reader to see what they find clear, well-defended, and logical. The Writing Center has trained employees who can help with this step!

Edit Your Central Claims

¤ Look closely at the first paragraph, including the thesis. Is the main point of this paper clearly expressed? Where is it?
¤ Create a “sentence outline” by summarizing each body paragraph in a single statement.
- → Compare your sentence outline statements with the language in your topic sentences (the first sentence of each body paragraph). Are the main ideas stated as clearly as possible?
  
  → Pay attention to the flow of ideas. Can you use transitions or connecting language to guide readers smoothly through each step?
  
  → Ensure that each paragraph essentially works to support each topic sentence, one key statement at a time. Don’t go off-topic or mix main ideas.

Edit for Responsible Sourcework

¤ Highlight any information supplied by other sources. Double-check all your citations and ensure you are using key terms correctly. Tip: If your paragraphs or topic sentences are mostly information you found from other sources, you may not be developing your own ideas.
¤ Highlight claims and ideas that basically come from your thinking (i.e., ideas not supplied by other authors and sources). Are your own ideas clear? And look critically at any sentences that aren’t from a source or from your own thinking–where did they come from.
¤ Make sure you include words that signal whether you are discussing someone else’s ideas or your own thinking. It may help to arrange these “reporting” and “discussion” passages into separate, dedicated steps for added clarity.

Edit for Clear, Direct Language

¤ Look for any multi-word phrases that can be replaced by a shorter, more direct word or phrase.
¤ Identify any strings of extra, optional phrases. Ensure that you are placing these bits of information in different spots around the sentence (the beginning, middle, and end) and not all in one place.

Review the page on Style and Clarity for more about this step.

TIPS FOR EDITING YOUR ESSAYS

The Logical Problem of Editing Your Own Writing

The most helpful decision you can make is to share your draft with a real, human reader. Readers can often see our writing in ways we can’t. Importantly, they often won’t know what you are hoping to communicate; instead, they have to rely on your writing to find an answer.

So ask them to report what they understood or to identify moments they found unclear. Ask them how they interpreted your language (i.e., what a statement “means” to them). Remember that it’s possible for others to interpret your writing in ways you don’t expect—or to have trouble understanding some moments entirely. This is priceless feedback.

Two Ways of Reading Your Own Writing

To help improve the clarity and precision of your own writing, try to imagine two different, imaginary “readers” you can bring in to examine your work. The two readers have different priorities, but both readers embrace something critical to good college writing.

Reader One: The Clear Reader

One kind of reader seeks smooth, clear movement through your sentences. This reader wants ideas to be explained so they can understand without too much effort—like during an engaging presentation. They prefer direct, straightforward language that doesn’t waste time with fluff, filler, or needlessly long phrases. Even when the topic is serious or complex, they want the writing to be accessible and understandable. After reading, they should be able to summarize the main points easily.

Tips to help you edit for clarity and directness:

¤ Use your own voice—use words you know. Sometimes just saying your ideas aloud leads to the clearest explanation.
¤ For sentences that seem tied into knots: Explain it to a 6th grader. Explain it three different ways. Explain it as simply or as quickly as you can. Sometimes making a graph or flowchart can help. Sometimes trying again after sleeping works like magic.
¤ Watch your sentence length. Shorter sentences written in plain (but not sloppy or informal) language are easier to understand—and easier to edit.
¤ Think in terms of actors and actions: “What (or who) does what?” Plain subjects and verbs will create more direct and lively sentences. For example, instead of saying “Sleep quantity is associated with better academic outcomes for students,” try this: “Students who get more sleep often perform better in school.”

Reader Two: The Careful Reader

The second type of reader is slower and more careful, more like a lawyer reading a contract before a client signs it. This reader wants to be sure that language is unmistakably clear.

This reader is eager to find moments that are misleading, vague, or factually incorrect, so they take great care to understand every word and its role in the sentence. They physically slow down to help them read more cautiously and double-check their understanding as they go. After finishing the text, this reader wants to feel confident that the words on the page entirely capture what the author “means.”

Tips to help you edit for precise, error-free sentences:

¤ Slow down the pace of your reading, or take one phrase at a time. Every word matters.
¤ Identify words or phrases that could mean more than one thing. Could another reader see that same language and arrive at a different understanding? What if they wanted to do that–in order to prove your claim wrong, for instance?
¤ Take special note of words or phrases that naturally point or connect to something else. For example, if you use the connecting word “which,” draw a line in your mind to the closest idea to the left. “Which” should usually refer to that idea. Similarly, if you use the phrase “resulting in…” after a comma, draw a line back to what caused that result. If you can’t find it or it’s on the other side of a long sentence, there is likely a problem.
¤ It is often helpful to temporarily remove any grammatically optional elements from the sentence so you can see its core structure or the relation between elements. Besides noticing big gaps between connected ideas, this method helps you see the simple grammar error in a sentence like this:

"After a decline from 2000-2010, the proportion of families with two working parents have increased relative to single-earner households."

Special Tips for ELL Writers

English Language Learners (ELL's) often face the same classic challenges as native speaking writers. First, they are learning how to use language that's new to them, especially discipline-specific words and phrases. Second, while ELL's already know a lot about grammar, they naturally produce more errors as their sentences become more complicated. Even "simple" errors can be hard to notice inside of the long essays that are required in college.

Try these tips:

¤ It’s often easier to spot errors in isolated sentences. So try to use a sentence-by-sentence approach as you read for accuracy. One method is “Backwards Editing,” which means reading the last sentence of the essay first, then moving backwards, one sentence at a time. This strategy reduces your tendency to read quickly and miss small errors. It also helps you check that each sentence is clear, on its own.
¤ Check for one just type of error at a time. For instance, read through it once as you focus exclusively on verb tenses. Then, read again looking only at articles (a, an, the), then prepositions, and so on.
¤ If your top goal is to avoid errors, consider writing shorter sentences. Grammar tends to get more complicated as you combine more elements together, so it’s easier to see and fix errors in shorter sentences. As you gain confidence, you can combine these highly accurate statements into longer sentences.
¤ Time and energy are real constraints. So divide your attention between important “anchors” and the less important sentences that support or explain those anchors. Anchors could include the thesis, topic sentences, definitions, and important clarifying statements near the ends of paragraphs. If your readers can understand your anchor statements clearly, they have a better chance at understanding your overall essay. Spend more time on anchor statements so that your thinking is essentially clear to readers, then you can tidy up supporting sentences after that.
¤ Take note of the outcomes of your editing. Do you notice any recurring issues? Do you see more errors with verbs or with nouns? Maybe you tried to use a word in a creative way—did it work? Remember that you are “researching” new language, so think of your sentences as little “experiments.” This kind of curiosity is powerful. Write down your discoveries in a dedicated language notebook and make an effort to integrate what you've learned.

¤ Remember that the Writing Center tutors, including an ELL Specialist, are trained to help multilingual writers of all backgrounds with their writing projects!