Tips for "Polished" Papers:
from "Simon and Schuster Quick Access Reference for Writers"

Revision

To engage in the process of revision, you should evaluate, add, cut, replace and move material, and then edit and proofread carefully.

Some tips for revision:
(if you cannot answer "yes" to the following questions, then you need to revise)

1. Does your thesis statement communicate topic, focus, and purpose?

2. Is your essay arranged effectively?

3. Have you cut material that strays off topic?

4. Does your introduction relate to the rest of your essay?

5. Do your body paragraphs express main ideas in topic sentences as needed? Are your main ideas clearly related to your thesis statement?

6. Are your body paragraphs developed with specific, concrete support (quotations from the text) for each main idea?

7. Do your paragraphs maintain coherence, using transitions and other techniques as necessary?

8. Does your conclusion provide a sense of completion?

9. Are your sentences concise?

10. Do your sentences show relationships among ideas?

11. Do you use effective parallelism, and does your writing style reflect variety and emphasis?

12. Have you eliminated sentence fragments? comma splices? run-on sentences?

13. Have you eliminated shifts in tense and mixed or incomplete sentences?

14. Have you used exact words (proper word choice)?

15. Is your language appropriate (formal) and your usage correct?

16. Have you avoided sexist language?

Editing means putting the final polish on your submission by finding and fixing ALL errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitals, numbers, italics, and abbreviations. Editing takes concentration and you should be able to respond "yes" to the following questions regarding editing:

17. Is the grammar correct?

18. Are the sentences correct?

19. Are commas used correctly?

20. Are all other punctuation marks used correctly?

21. Are capital letters, italics (or underlining), abbreviations, numbers, and hyphens used correctly?

22. Is the spelling correct? (and do not merely rely on your computer spell-check to detect errors)

Finally, proofread by performing a careful line-by-line reading of a final, clean version of your essay before you submit it to me.

Some tips for proofreading:
*Proofread with a ruler so you can focus on one line at a time.
*Start at the end of a paragraph and read backward word by word to avoid being distracted by content.
*Read your final draft aloud so that you can see and hear errors; look for omitted letters and words as well as repeated words.

And, consult a grammar guide book to help you with any errors you may be uncertain about.