7.1 Revising & Orders of Concern

by Sarah Karlis
License information can be found below the article. 

Revising is an important part of the writing process. In fact, it can be just as important as the actual writing stuff down part. Revision is the time to look critically at your writing, rethink how you are approaching your topic or piece, consider the tone and how an audience might react to it, and then make changes that impact the overall writing. Revision does not equal proofreading. Proofreading is the last stage of the revision process.

Have you ever started picking your room or your house and realized you needed to vacuum? And then after you vacuum, you see how dusty your dressers or table is, or you realize there are crumbs all over the counters. And then you clean those up, but in the process of cleaning up those crumbs or bits of paper or dust, you drop some on the floor. So, now your freshly vacuumed or swept floor is no longer clean. And you have to do it all over again.

This is what can happen with revision if you don't approach it with a plan and an order of operation.

Start with the big stuff then move your way down to the small stuff.

Levels of Concern

In writing, we call the "big stuff" High Order Concerns (HOCs). These are the really big issues in a paper. Is the writing fulfilling the purpose that it needs to fulfill? Is it written in the appropriate genre? Is it written to an appropriate audience? Is it written about whatever topic it is supposed to be written about? Is the overall organization of the paper logical and easy to follow?

For example, if you are at work and your manager needs a sales report for the last quarter and, instead of a report, you decide to write an essay. Your manager would be confused, at best. The essay is not the genre they asked for or need, and generally, this would be a big problem that needs to be fixed.

Next down the list are Middle Order Concerns (MOCs). These are generally paper-level or paragraph-level issues that impact understanding and readability. For example, if you are writing an essay for a class and you write a three-page pager as one long paragraph. The lack of paragraph breaks will cause readability issues. It's difficult for humans to read a wall of text—we tend to lose our place, get distracted, and generally have to work harder to understand the content. Also, without paragraphs, there will be a lack of overall organization. Paragraphs help organize the parts of an argument or different topics within a paper. This is even true of genres like emails, once they are over a certain size.

The final area to work on with revision are Later Order Concerns (LOCs, sometimes called Low Order Concerns). This is where we can get into proofreading. Once we know the writing is effective, written to the appropriate audience, in the appropriate genre, and stylistically well organized and written for that genre, we can move on to typos, grammar, and mechanics. One of the reasons that I prefer to use the term "later" instead of "low" order concerns is that there are genres in which grammatical errors can be a very big deal. Think about the possible effect of typos on a legal document, for example. Even comma placement can be extremely important in certain high-stakes writing. 

By calling it a later-order concern, we can try to remember that we need to tackle it last. Grammar and mechanics may be important for a particular genre or they may not. If we're texting a friend for a meet-up before our cell phone battery dies, it's really important that we get the time right on the message (high-order concern), but it's not a big deal if we use a comma (later order concern). And in the case of the text message, we likely wouldn't bother revising for the later order concerns. However, with genres like essays, legal documents, resumes, cover letters, and so on, we don't want to skip that proofreading. However, we do want to wait until everything else is done. 

If we skip the top two concerns and jump down to proofreading, we risk two things: 

1. We may need to rewrite sections of the paper that we already proofread and then we'll need to proofread all over again.

2. We'll decide it's too much work to go back and revise the bigger things and just skip them altogether. The second one here is the most common. If in your head, you are "done" writing when that first draft is done, then it feels like all this extra work to go back and revise large sections of the paper. However, the draft isn't the "done" point of the writing process.

We need to retrain our brains to know that drafting is just a part of the writing process, and that revision is an equally important part. Once you effectively retrain your brain around the writing process, though, there are multiple benefits. First, your writing will be stronger with substantial and thoughtful revision. And second, it can take the pressure and stress off of the act of writing. If you know you can rewrite it later, you may find it easier to let go of perfectionism. It's okay if the first draft isn't "perfect" or even "good." When I'm struggling with a piece of writing, I enjoy being able to tell myself "that's a tomorrow problem!" and then moving on. It keeps me from getting stuck when something isn't coming together how I'd like.

Hopefully, throughout this class and as you continue your education, you'll learn to incorporate revision as a critical part of the writing process. Your writing will be improved when you do. Even the best writers (or maybe even, especially, the best writers) revise frequently.

For more information on how to revise, watch the following video:

References

University Writing Center (2019). Order of Concerns. [Handout]. Eastern Michigan University. 

LICENSE

"Revising & Orders of Concern" by Sarah Karlis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

"The Writing Process: Revision" (Video) by Arizona State University's Study Hall Series.