Editing How is editing different from revision? Revising focuses on explaining ideas more clearly (big picture items: thesis, organization, paragraph structure, quality of examples) Editing focuses on smaller errors (small picture items: sentence level concerns, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, word choice)

Editing checklist (in no particular order) Spelling Commonly misspelled words (You’re/ your, to/too, their/there/they’re, affect/effect, etc.) Other (use a dictionary) Capitalization Proper nouns (names, places, titles of stories/novels) Beginning of a sentence (not needed after a semicolon) Punctuation Comma Rules #1-5 Remember to have three appositives! (You need to enclose them with a pair of commas)

Slang (Word Choice) Formality markers E.g.: “a lot,” “stuff,” “like,” “kid,” “guy,” “got to,” etc. This NOT an exhaustive list; if you can think of a more formal word for it, then it’s probably slang. Formality markers Don’t say “I believe…”/ “In my opinion…” “I” is okay for examples, but only as a last resort. Try to make it third person. Example: Informal: I once helped a homeless man when he… Formal: Ricardo once helped a homeless man when he… Remove “you” Instead say, “A person,” or “One” E.g. Informal: You should be concerned about others because… Formal: One should be concerned about others because

Repetition (Word Choice) Use synonyms (do repeat your point, but not the exact same word choices) Concern: Conciseness (Word Choice) Use higher vocab words (look for places where one big word could’ve been used instead of ten small words) Unsubstantial words (Word Choice) Replace or eliminate these dead words: good, bad, very, really, great, etc.