Editing. The part always left until the end, the part we always dread – and most often, the part that is left out. It is a crucial fragment of the academic writing process yet is most often ignored due to lack of time management, panic or sometimes not recognising its importance.
Most often in my appointments, I find that the advice I give out time and time again is surrounding editing and the value of reading through your assignment with a critical lens. Students often doubt their work, not giving themselves the credit they deserve – my view: if you have the ability to write in depth about your subject knowledge, you know what you are talking about. Step one to the editing process is all about confidence, when you read through your work you have to imagine you are reading secondary material – would you use this yourself? Why not? That’s your starting point.
By identifying the gaps in your argument, you are able to make adjustments before the deadline allowing yourself to get better marks. A quick skim read an hour before the deadline will only create panic and anxiety if you notice the mistakes but have no time to correct them. Failing that, by not editing at all, the first person to see the mistakes is your tutor.
We can break editing into three parts: academic, grammar and what I like to call, ‘easy reading.’
1. Academic – this is arguably the most important reason to edit. In an essay you are being marked on how well you can articulate your academic knowledge, but also how well you can present your own ideas. When you read through your assignment as an editor, not a writer, you must focus on identifying your key ideas and whether the way you have presented them is clear to the reader. The best way to tackle this is to read aloud (maybe not on the library third floor – but at home, or to a friend) to make sure that it makes sense. By changing the way you read your own work, you will notice things that you would have missed previously. If it doesn’t make sense, or you would not contribute this idea in a seminar then it is time to either re-word or scrap it. (Be brutal.)
2. Grammar – whether you love it or hate it, grammar is a crucial part to any form of writing but especially within the academic world. While the first recommendation will always be to familiarise yourself with grammar rules, it is not always realistic – especially when its assignment season! There are plenty of tools to help you get acquainted with these pesky rules, the most accessible at any time of the day is online grammar guides. While googling ‘is it a semi-colon or a comma?’ may help you temporarily it is not a permanent fix and can often disrupt writing flow. Use a guide that breaks it down step-by-step, but one from an academic source (universities, recognisable websites from classes etc.). As tempting as it may be AVOID AI generated editors – they may do the work for you, but not always in the correct way (Not to mention the risk of an academic offence – remember you’re the one getting a degree, not your computer!). As with academic tone, by reading your work aloud it will help you identify grammar mistakes, for instance if you are running out of breath you definitely need a comma! For more tricky issues, come and see us in Writing Development!
3. ‘Easy Reading’ – while this isn’t marked like academic argument and grammar, the way your work reads to the marker makes a massive difference in terms of how generous your marks are. This is mainly because if an assignment reads well, it is easy to identify what the student is saying. Well, what does ‘reads well’ or ‘easy reading’ really mean? There is no distinct way to define this, but essentially you want to make sure your work reads smoothly, with no clunky sentences, random capital letters or awkward spacing. This also includes following layout guides in your subject handbook. Fortunately, if you have taken the time to edit academic tone and grammar, this should naturally fall into place. The final stage of editing is to be able to read through and/or read aloud your assignment without having to pause due to awkward phrasing or clunky sentences. My top tip in this stage is to print your work and read it from paper rather than a screen – our eyes become adjusted to the laptop so much that sometimes they are unable to identify the mistakes that we spot on paper (our default settings!).
By following this step-to-step, and giving your work the editing it deserves, you should find that you will naturally benefit from a reduced word count, higher quality writing and clearer ideas which in turn generate higher marks. However, in order to get the most out of editing, you must factor in time to your writing process. Once you have finished writing your assignment, don’t look at it until the following day so you can then read it with fresh eyes. By not allowing enough time, you are not allowing yourself to edit properly – because if not properly, why edit at all?