Six Stages of the Essay Writing Process 6

Stage Six: Editing

If you were snatched away right now by aliens and never seen again, you’d still get a reasonable mark for your writing piece. It’s got plenty of ideas, they’re in the right order, and the whole thing flows without gaps or bulges. However, in the event of an alien abduction it would be comforting to know that you’d left a really superior piece of writing behind. The way to achieve this is through the last step of the writing process: editing.

What is editing, exactly?

Basically ‘editing’ means making your piece as reader-friendly as possible by making the sentences flow in a  clear, easy-to-read way. It also means bringing your piece of writing into line with accepted ways of using English: using the appropriate grammar for the purposes of the piece, appropriate punctuation and spelling, and appropriate paragraphing.

Why edit?

I’ve used the word ‘appropriate’ rather than ‘correct’ because language is a living, changing thing and the idea of it being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is less important than whether it suits its purpose . . . there’s nothing wrong with those thongs, but maybe not for a job interview! It’s all about being practical. If you use spellings that aren’t the usual ones, or grammar that isn’t what we’ve come to accept as ‘right’, it will distract your readers. Instead of thinking ‘what wonderful ideas this person has’, they’ll think ‘this person can’t spell’. It will break the trance of reading. Readers can be irritated and troubled by unconventional usage (I’ve had dozens of letters from readers about the fact that I don’t use inverted commas around dialogue in some of my novels). It’s your right to make up new ways to do things, but expect to pay a price for it. In the case of a school essay, this price might be a lower mark. (Like everything else about the English language, there are exceptions to this. Imaginative writing often plays fast and loose with accepted ways of using English in order to achieve a particular effect.)

The read-through

As with revising, the first thing to do is to read the piece all the way through, looking for problems. Make a note of where you think there are problems, but don’t stop to fix them. Once you’ve found them all, you can go back and take your time fixing each one. If there’s even the slightest feeling in the back of your mind that something might not be quite right, don’t try to talk yourself out of that feeling.

As writers, we all want our piece to be perfect, so we have a tendency to read it as if it is perfect, with a selective blindness for all its problems. For that reason, this is a good moment to ask someone else to look at it for you. To make a piece as user-friendly as possible, you need to check the piece for style, grammar and presentation.

Editing for style

You made a decision about style back at the start of Stage Four, but in the heat of the moment as you wrote your draft, style might have slipped or changed. You might have forgotten a technical term, or been unable to  think of the proper word for something, or you might have got your thoughts tangled up in long complicated sentences. That’s fine—that shows you had your priorities right: get the broad shape of the essay right first, not get bogged down in detail. But now the moment has come to get to grips with all those details of style. The main point about style in an essay is that it should always be the servant of meaning. In an essay, a style that draws attention to itself has failed. The aim of an essay is to get your ideas across strongly and clearly—the style is just the vehicle to convey the ideas.

Questions to ask about style

Have I used the style most appropriate to an essay?

• An essay should be written in a reasonably formal style. It should be in the third person or the passive voice. ‘I’ is generally not appropriate.

Have I chosen the most appropriate words for this style?

• To achieve a formal style, individual words shouldn’t be slangy or too casual. You’ll be expected to use the proper technical terms where appropriate. On the other hand, your essay shouldn’t be overloaded with pompous or obscure words. If a simple word does the job, use it.
• Does the writing give the reader a smooth ride or a bumpy one?
• In a first draft it’s very easy to get yourself into long complicated sentences containing too many ideas. This is the time to simplify them. Even if a long complicated sentence is grammatically correct, it’s generally awkward and hard to read. Try it out loud—if it’s hard to get it right, or if it sounds clunky, rewrite it. It’s much better to have two or three straightforward sentences than a big baggy monster.
• On the other hand, the ‘See Spot run’ variety of sentence gets pretty mind-numbing after a while. If you have too many short, choppy sentences you may need to look at ways of connecting some of them, using words such as ‘although’, ‘in addition’, ‘on the other hand’…
• If all the sentences are constructed exactly the same way, you should look at ways of varying them.

Go back to Stage Four to remind yourself about style.

Editing for grammar

Imaginative writing may have a little latitude with grammar, but an essay has none—the grammar just has to be right.Grammar is a big subject, and for a proper understanding of it, I strongly suggest you get a specialised book on the subject. This is a quick checklist of some of the most common grammatical problems.

Questions to ask about grammar

• Is this really a complete sentence?
• Have I joined two complete sentences with only a comma between them?
• Do my subjects agree with my verbs?
• Have I changed tense or person without meaning to?
• Is one bit of my sentence somehow attached to the wrong thing?
• Have I put enough commas in? Or too many?
• Have I put apostrophes in the right places?
• If I’ve used colons and semicolons, have I used them properly?
• If I’ve used inverted commas and brackets, have I used them properly?
• Have I put paragraph breaks in the best places?
• Have I trusted the computer grammar checker too much?

Editing for presentation

Presentation probably shouldn’t matter, but let’s face it, it does. No matter how well-researched and clearly argued your essay is, it (and your mark) will be undermined by spelling mistakes, messy-looking layout or illegible handwriting.
Questions to ask about presentation

Is my spelling correct?

• You’d think that using a computer spell checker would solve all spelling problems. However, if an incorrect spelling is in fact a legitimate word, the computer won’t always pick it up as a mistake.
• Be aware, also, that computer spell checkers may also suggest US spellings, which aren’t always the same as Australian ones, and they are very bad at names of people and places.
• If you’re not using a computer, go through your writing very carefully for spelling. If you have even the faintest shadow of doubt about the spelling of a word, look it up in a dictionary. There are certain words that all of us find hard—words like ‘accommodation’, ‘necessary’, ‘disappoint’—so if you get to a word that you know is often a problem, double-check it even if you think it’s right.
• Another reader can also be a big help in picking up spelling errors. If there are two perfectly good spellings of a word, choose one and use it consistently.

Does my layout make my piece look good?

• Layout means the way the text is arranged on the page. Layout makes a huge psychological difference to your reader. A piece that’s crammed tightly on the page with no space anywhere and few paragraph breaks can look dense and uninviting. A piece that’s irregular—different spacing on different parts, different amounts of indentation or different spacing between the lines—looks jerky and unsettling.
• Your layout should allow plenty of ‘air’ around the text, with generous margins all round.
• You should leave some space between the lines, too—not only for comments by the teacher, but also because your text is easier on the eye if there’s good separation between the lines.
• It’s just human nature to prefer something pleasant to deal with and—contrary to some opinions—teachers are, in fact, human. So make sure your piece of writing is as legible as you can make it. If it’s handwritten, write as clearly as you can and don’t let the writing get too small or too sloping. On a computer, stick to one of
• the standard text fonts (New York or Times New Roman, for example). Don’t use fancy fonts. Use 10- or 12-point type size. If your piece isn’t long enough, the teacher won’t be fooled by 16-point type. Human, yes. Entirely stupid—not usually.

Does my title help the reader enter the essay?

Your essay may have a title: The Water Cycle. Or it may have a heading: Term 2 assignment: ‘What Were the Causes of World War I?’. Whatever the title is, it should tell the reader exactly what the writing task is.

Have I acknowledged other people’s contributions to my essay?

• Most essay writers use other people’s work to some extent. Sometimes they use it as background reading. Sometimes they specifically use information someone else has gathered or insights someone else has had. Sometimes they actually quote someone else’s words.
• It’s very important to acknowledge this help, and say exactly where it comes from. This is partly simple gratitude, but it also means that other people can go and check your sources, to find out if, as you claim in your essay, Einstein really did say the earth was flat.
• You should acknowledge other people’s work in two ways: first, in a bibliography at the end of your essay. This is just a list of all the sources of information that you’ve used. List them alphabetically by author’s surname, with information in this order: author, title, publisher and place and date of publication (or the address of the website).
• As well as appearing in the bibliography, sources that you’ve used in a direct way should also be acknowledged in the essay itself—for example, ‘As Bloggs points out, Einstein was not always right.’
• The titles of any books that you refer to should be in italics (if you’re using a computer) or underlined (if you’re writing by hand).

Editing an Essay: 5 steps

1. Read the piece through

• Don’t stop to fix mistakes, just mark them.

2. Is the style okay?

Ask yourself:

• Have I chosen the style that’s most appropriate for an essay? (Remember, an essay is aiming to persuade or inform.)
• Have I chosen particular words that jar with this style? (Check for over-casual, conversational words or ‘ordinary’ words where a technical one would be more appropriate.)
• Have I chosen to construct sentences in a way that jars with the style? (Look for short, simplistic sentences, also for needlessly pretentious ones.)

3. Is the grammar okay?

Ask yourself:

• Have I written any sentence fragments?
• Have I written any run-on sentences?
• Do my subjects agree with my verbs?
• Have I changed tense or person?
• Have I dangled any modifiers?
• Have I shown the pause I intended by using commas?
• Have I used apostrophes in the right places?
• Have I used colons or semicolons correctly?
• Have I used inverted commas or brackets correctly?
• Are there plenty of paragraph breaks, and are they in the most natural places?

4. Is the presentation okay?

Ask yourself:

• Have I checked spellings? (Be careful of sound-alikes such as their/there/ they’re.)
• Is my layout orderly and well spaced?
• Have I found the best title for my piece, which prepares the reader for the essay?
• Have I acknowledged sources of ideas and information in a bibliography?

5. Print out the piece and read it through again

• Repeat the steps above, if necessary. Then print and read it again.
• If everything seems OK in the final read-through, the essay is finished.

IN THIS SERIES ABOUT THE ESSAY WRITING PROCESS:

Stage One: Getting Ideas >
Stage Two: Choosing Ideas >
Stage Three: Outling >
Stage Four: Drafting >
Stage Four: Revising >
Stage Six: Editing