Chapter 13: Content Revision ENG 113: Composition I

Revision Means “Re-Vision” Revise = Latin revisere = “to look at again; to visit again; to look back upon” Revision = Recursive Revisiting, reconsidering, reencountering, reexperiencing Revision does not mean spell-checking or proofreading (you need to do that after revising!) Revision means re-vision = seeing your essay again

Revision Means “Re-Vision” Come at it fresh, as if you’ve never read it before Devote yourself to making it better in both big and small ways You need to reconsider your own ideas and the way you are presenting them Are you really saying what you want to say in the way you want to say it?

Content Revision How well does your essay meet the requirements of the original assignment? How clear and appropriate is your thesis? How well have you supported your thesis with relevant and specific details? How unified is your essay? Are there any irrelevant parts?

Does your Draft Address the Assignment? Does the essay meet the basic assignment criteria? Get out the assignment description Refresh your memory of the requirements Double-check that you are one the right track What do you do if you are no longer on the right track? Evaluate if you can get back on track by yourself Yes! Great! Fix it and move on No! Ask for help!

Does Your Thesis Have issues? How is your thesis working for you? Does it accurately reflect your main point? Did you get any feedback from peer reviewers or from your professor that indicates you might want to rethink the point you are making? Are there any logical, ethical, moral, or practical problems with your thesis? No problems? Great! Problems? Decide if you need to adjust the thesis to make it better Your working thesis is “working” for a reason = you can “tinker” with it until you get it just right

Does Your Argument Work? Take a look at the thoroughness and solidity of the paper you have written Does the body of your paper support the thesis in a clear way? Review paragraphs to make sure that they provide the proper support for your thesis Strengthen weak support Clarify ambiguous points Remove parts that wander off topic Make sure that you are presenting the best and clearest case for the reader

Is Your Essay Unified? Unity = the entire essay is about one topic The entire essay works to develop and support the essay’s main point The thesis is to the essay what the topic sentence is to the paragraph: a central idea that unifies the content related to it If you find material that does not fit in the essay = cut it! Words, sentences, paragraphs that do not fit should be removed

Let It Go!

Reverse Engineer Your Draft You can reverse engineer your draft by outlining its components Outline after the draft is completed and you have received feedback Formal outline = a focused summary of your essay that you can review, revise, and use as a guide to the structural changes that you want to make in your essay

Formal Outline Allows you to compare the content you actually have in your draft with the content that you know you should have in your draft Reveals the holes in your essay where any missing content rightly belongs (as well as any empty content that’s filling space but not serving any identifiable purpose) Lets you see the overall organization of a multipage essay without flipping back and forth between pages

Formal Outline Format Standard Format Break into chunks Break chunks into component parts Label each chunk or component with a letter, number, etc. Sentence Outline – an outline in which each entry is a complete sentence rather than a word or phrase Ensure that your essay is actually saying something Force you to understand everything you’ve said in your essay Outlines pave the way for the next step in revision: The Structural Revision