EIU Writing Center

Important Points About Revision (Literally Re-Seeing)

Many successful writers and teachers will tell you that good writing comes from strong revision, which is re-seeing your document and changing, altering, and cutting aspects of your piece of writing to make your document stronger, leaner, and more rhetorically effective. So strong revision strategies are crucial to not only producing a strong piece of writing but also becoming a successful writer.

With the importance of revision in mind, here are three categories that you need to consider as you revise your writing.

Deep Revision

Adding and developing details and examples and support
Cutting or deleting unhelpful details or examples or support
Creating new paragraphs
Cutting whole sections
Changing overall focus and purpose of the document
Drafting a new introduction
Drafting new support paragraphs
Drafting a new conclusion
Changing your thesis/organizing idea, thereby changing the focus of the paper
Developing more examples
Creating more descriptive, concrete, and vivid details

Middle Revision

Reorganization
Making a thesis more assertive or reflective of the whole paper
Adding specific and concrete details to paragraphs
Addressing the audience of the document more directly and effectively
Cutting unnecesary details
Developing greater clarity within specific sentences or passages
Editing for more sentence variety--varied lengths and types of sentences

Surface Editing

Proofreading for grammatical correctness
Reconsidering the "right words" in specific sentences
Combining sentences
Cutting unnecessary words
Inserting necessary words