B.    Sentence and word-level revisions

Clean up your writing for clarity.

Once you’ve got all your content and organization straightened out in your essay, then it’s time to take a look at your writing on the sentence level—but be sure that the bigger concerns are taken care of first. But once your paragraphs are solid, take a look at your transitions and grammar.

 

Transitions.

You’ve probably seen lists of transition words and phrases, and these can be helpful. But remember that the purpose of transitions is to connect ideas to make your writing clear for your reader.

This applies to transitions between paragraphs and transitions between sentences. What is the idea that came before? How does it connect to the idea that comes next? Highlight that connection so your reader doesn’t get lost.

 

Grammar.

When it comes to grammar, the main goal is for your reader to have as little trouble as possible understanding your writing. If a sentence is confusing, something needs to change! If your writing is clear and easy enough to understand, your grammar is probably fine.

Don’t forget that your goal is to be understood. Choosing overly fancy or academic-sounding words that might not mean exactly what you want to say can only hurt you. Your professor wants to understand your ideas, not be dazzled by a thesaurus—so if simplifying your wording will make your ideas clearer, simplicity is the way to go!

For more specific grammar help, check out the Writing Center’s grammar and punctuation handouts on our Resources page

You may want to pay particular attention to:

 

Sentence structure.

The way your sentences are structured can mean a lot for the clarity of a paragraph. Don’t bury important information in the middle of a sentence, place it at the start or the end. It’s usually better to begin a sentence with information the reader already knows, to give context for new information—which, being important, should usually come at the end. Guide your reader from one idea to the next.

 

Citations and formatting.

The specifics of your citations and formatting will depend on the citation style your instructor requires. The most common of these are MLA, APA, and Chicago format. Check out the following links to make sure you’ve got everything formatted correctly:

 

A.  Sentence and word-level revisions

Generally speaking, it’s not worth looking at sentence- and word-level revisions until after I’m absolutely sure that the content and organization are up to par. For instance, what if I had worked really hard to make all the sentences of my conclusion perfect, and then had decided to scrap the last half and redo it entirely? That would’ve been so much wasted effort!

But now that I have the content all sorted out, I can move on to making my sentences clearer. The first thing I’ll do is read the essay aloud so I can hear how each sentence is put together and make sure everything is clear enough to be understood audially.

I’ll inevitably find some sentences that are unclear. In this case, let’s work through one little passage that stood out to me as being awkwardly worded:

Although it may be a simple rhetorical tactic, the fact that an attractive face on an advertisement is effective is undeniable. Who he is helps build up his ethos—a young, apparently healthy, attractive man who exudes strength and confidence.

Yikes. Not the clearest sentences I’ve ever written. Let’s try redoing this:

Putting an attractive face on an advertisement is an undeniably effective rhetorical tactic, if a simple one. His appearance—a young, apparently healthy, attractive man who exudes strength and confidence—helps build up his ethos.

This feels better. Although they weren’t too bad to begin with—my ideas weren’t too far buried in the wording, after all—I certainly think I’ve made them clearer. The trick is to ask myself, what am I really trying to say in this sentence? And lay the idea out as directly and coherently as possible.

From here, since I’m pretty happy with my sentences, I can look at individual wording issues. The two pieces of advice that my tutor gave me were,

  1. In my rough draft I used a lot of contractions (like “don’t” and “he’s” and “can’t,” etc.), which are less formal and less academic, and so I’d probably be better off getting rid of them; and
  2. I also used the plural personal pronoun “we” a lot in my rough draft, which is also informal, and I should probably edit it out.

So I took his advice and edited out all contractions and instances of using “we” or “us” or “our.”

And that’s pretty much the last thing I needed to do in order to really be satisfied with this essay. So, I think I’m just about done! Let’s look at the essay in its entirety now, with my edits highlighted and the whole thing in standard MLA format:

 

You know what? That’s pretty darn good. I think I’m ready to turn this thing in.