Embedded Files
Also, this is our very last lesson in this course. We got sad, so we decided to look at kittens. (Source)
This, right here, is literally the moment that divides the As from the Bs and Cs. It's the difference between a pile of words and a completed research paper. It can also be one of the more exhausting parts of the writing process, because you were so sure it was finished. But then it turns out you've just begun a long journey that every single writer of good research papers has to deal with: revising.
But, as always, Shmoop is here to make it all a little less painful. I've got some specific strategies you can use to edit your own papers and some important questions to ask yourself. And then I'll show you how to revise somebody else's paper and how not scary peer review can be. For the final step in our process—proofreading—I'll go a little wild and bust out my inner grammar cat shine.
The most important thing to remember, even when you're disheartened and tempted to stop revising and just take a B, is that revising is one of the most important skills you can acquire. You'll use it for the rest of your life, even if you never write another research paper (which you probably will). Revising well is about evaluating the quality of your own work, seeing its flaws, and then making it better. And we're generally fans of our work not sucking.
THE TWELVE STEP PLAN TO ROCK-SOLID EDITING
THE TWELVE STEP PLAN TO ROCK-SOLID EDITING
I don't actually know what rock-hard editing would look like, and this lesson doesn't have twelve steps. But it was catchy, okay? Anyway, this reading covers the three different types of revisions you're gonna have to deal with: editing on your own, peer revisions, and proofreading. Each of them can do different things for your writing, and each of them is challenging in its own way. So buckle up.
EDITING ON YOUR OWN
While it might be tempting to immediately send your paper to your Mom or your Aunt Enid who teaches English, I think it's probably best to do some editing on your own first. Because, let's face it, even your Aunt Enid probably shouldn't be subjected to your first draft.
The first thing you should do before editing your paper is to wait for a while. Give yourself a little time to recover from the horrors of writing, and distance yourself from the project. Go play a video game, work on other homework, or go for a run. Then, when you return to your paper, do all this stuff.
Some people don't feel like they can "see" the structure of their paper very well just by rereading it. For those people, it can be an awesome idea to make a reverse outline. Go read about what that is, and think about whether it could be right for you.
USING OTHER PEOPLE'S BRAINS
Peer review is an absolutely crucial step in the revision process. The simple fact of the matter is that you have an emotional investment in your paper, and you sunk a boatload of time into it, so it's going to be hard for you to be objective. Maybe a piece of supporting evidence isn't presented very well. You know what you meant to say, so you may not notice that you're not connecting your evidence to your main point very well. A peer might be able to point out, "Hey, I'm not totally sure on how this supports your main point." Unless you happen to hit your head on a rock and forget everything that happened in the last week, you're not going to be able to review your own paper pretty well.
But it can be a less-great idea to have an unstructured peer review. Maybe your reviewer just focuses on tiny grammar problems, and doesn't deal with your underlying argument. Or maybe they don't give you specific advice, and just sort of ramble about their feelings on your topic. That's why some kind of form or worksheet can really help. You don't have to read it now (because you'll be seeing it again in a little while), but here's what a peer review worksheet might look like.
Once you've got your focused and thoughtful comments back from your peer reviewers, you have to actually listen to their advice. That seems obvious, but it can be super hard. It's easy to get defensive, or to decide the advice is dumb ("OMG I can't believe you don't understand my point! You must be an idiot!"). But before you dismiss any single piece of their advice, you've got to seriously think it through, and ask yourself how you could fix the problem. They're the ones with the objective perspective, remember, not you.
PROOFREADING
People often confuse proofreading for editing, but they're actually birds of a completely different feather (like sparrow vs. pterodactyl). Proofreading strictly deals with grammar, structure, and spelling problems at the sentence level. That's the reason it should come last—you don't want to meticulously proofread something that you're going to rearrange or delete later.
First you're looking for the obvious stuff: spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, bad grammar. Even if you won the third grade spelling bee, this might still be difficult. That's because our brains are often reading what we meant to write, rather than what we actually wrote. Stupid brains. So it can be useful to trick your brain into seeing your writing a little more clearly. Try reading the whole thing out loud, or printing it out. Even changing the font size or color can change it up enough for you to see the mistakes more clearly.
Beyond the basic punctuation and grammar errors, here are some things which you should keep an eye out for:
Messy citations. We know you know what good citations look like. Don't let 'em turn into poorly punctuated train wrecks.
Passive voice. When you're writing something academic, it can be super easy to phrase things passively, like this: "Skateboards have been described as counter-cultural objects." The sentence would be stronger if we know who did the describing, like this: "Many social commentators have described skateboards as counter-cultural objects." Here's a good way to figure out if a sentence is passive: Can you add "by zombies" to the end of it? As in, "Skateboards have been described as counter-cultural objects...by zombies." Then it's passive.
Word repetition. Repeating the same word too close together makes for jarring, clunky sentences: "The environment has been an issue of concern for environmental activists and scientists studying the environment." Gross. Try synonyms instead, or rewording things. Like: "The natural world is, of course, the primary focus for environmentalists and ecologists."
Sentence structure repetition. It can also be super easy to repeat the same sentence structure over and over again. Like so: "Unfortunately, that's what happened. The soldiers were defeated. Against all odds, they were losing the war." Shake it up a little bit, guys—vary sentence length and structure. (Terrifying fact: my ninth grade English teacher made the class count the number of words in each sentence and change any that were too close in length.)
Run-on sentences. If you're one of those weirdos who loves writing 5 line mondo sentences, it's a good idea to find logical places to break these guys up, because otherwise the reader gets exhausted by all that reading and by the end of it, they can't remember what the first part of the sentence was and they're totally lost, so please just use periods and not an endless string of commas. See what we did there.
Poorly integrated quotes. This one is a symptom of people just figuring out the whole writing-with-research thing. Your quotes should fit smoothly with your writing. So, instead of: "This paper argues that monkeys are awesome. 'The popularity of monkey stuffed animals is a testament to their cuteness.'" Try something more like: "This paper argues that monkeys are awesome, which is supported by the enduring 'popularity of monkey stuffed animals.'" See how the quote is now supporting the writer's claim, rather than standing awkwardly next to it?
Unclear pronouns. As a rule, a pronoun refers to the last explicitly named noun. If you use too many pronouns, it becomes unclear what you're talking about: "The domestication of the cow provided an excellent source of protein for early humans. This was an important step for them." Was the protein an important step for cows? Or was domestication an important step for cows? Or was an excellent source of protein an important step for early humans? What is even happening here?! It's madness!
The Oxford comma. The Oxford comma is the last comma in a list of things: like apples, oranges, and monkeys. It's now optional, but I personally still believe in its supreme power.
Google Sites
Report abuse