SOME SUGGESTION FOR SUCCESSFUL REVISING

.      SOME SUGGESTION FOR SUCCESSFUL REVISING

Offered here are some suggestions aimed at making your revising stage as effective as possible. These suggestion are based on yours of writing experience, but they are only suggestion. Not ironclad rules.

Suggestion 1: Give Yourself Some Breathing Space

After you have finished you first draft. Give yourself some time,at least 24 hours  before you begin the revising process . This “breathing Space” gives you some distance from your work. Which you will   need to order to review it objectively. And it gives your unconscious an opportunity to over the material. So that when you return to the argument.you’ll find you have fresh ideas about how to make it more effective. You have probably had the experience of rereading a graded paper and wondering how you could have missed the problems that seem so obvious to you now. Putting some distance between first draft and the revision gives you and opportunity to gain this fresh perspective, and to put it to use before you paper is graded

Suggestion 2 : Avoid the Red Pen

As you’ve reviewing your first draft, avoid the lure of the red pen or typing in any changes if you are reading from the screen-the temptation to make small editorial changes before you had reread and the argument as a whole. Reread with your hands tied behind your back(figuratively, that is), and you will get a much better sense of how the draft works as a whole.

Suggestion 3: Review Your Original Purpose and Audience

In writing the first draft, you have been intent on coming up with the right word and composing individual sentences. It’s easy at this level to lose touch with your original purposes and intended audience. So an important question to ask yourself as you’re reading revising is whether you have fulfilled you original intended audience.

 It can be helpful to review your argument pretending that you’re one of its intended readers. From this perspective, you can ask yourself: do I understand the purposes and claim of this argument? Are the vocabulary and specialized terms clear to me? Am I convinced by the argument?

Suggestion 4: Review Your Organization

In reviewing the effectiveness of your argument, you’ll need to consider not only your purposes and audience, but also the overall organization of what you’ve written, making sure that the parts fir together well and are logically sequenced, that nothing curcial is ommited, and the structure is lean, with a minimum of repetition. If it’s hard to keep the organization in mind, try reproducimg it I outline forms, as in the following model. Remember, you’re outlining what you actually wrote, not what you intended to write. If you actually wrote your draft from outline. Don‘t look at it until you have completed this new one.

       I.            Introduction (I if appropriate)

    II.            Claim(if appropiate)

 III.            Supossing arguments

A
B
C
D

IV conclusion or summary (if appropriate)

If you have troble constructing this new outline, your argument probably has organizational problems that need attention.

Seggestion 5: Review Your Argument’s Coherence

Even the most carefully organized argument will puzzle readers readers if the relationship between the part is nit indicated in some way. In certain professions and busineses, standard format include headings like “ introduction,” “ the problem,” “history,” and so on. But such heading are inappropriaate in msany things. You can make the elements of  your argument coherent-  estabilish their relationship to one aother and to the whole—by using simple transitional words and expressions that indicate the nature of the relationship.

Word like therefore, thus, soand consequently identify a conclusion and it’s convidence. Words like but, however, and the other hand indicate exception to a stated point .yu can alert your reader to the introduction of each new piece of support by using indicators such as   these are enormously useful to readesof argumrnts.particularly when the argument is long or elaborate. They helps readers understand how one statement or section that may otherwise seem a digression or an irrelevancy relates to what has gone efore or what might come later.

Seggestion 6 : Review Your Trying

The revising stages is the tome to consider yhe effectiveness of your argument’s style: its tone, word choice, amd general treatment of the readrs. Style is acrucial component of argument, often playing a major role in convincingnor alienting readers. Poor style is just as damaging to an argument as a vague or unspported claim; an affective style is just as convising as compilling evidence. And while you’re considering your style, think about the othes projected by your argument: does the argument reflect the writers who is fair, open-minded., and oppropriately confidenct?

Check your draft to see if you have (1) used connotation effectively, (2) avoided slanting, (3) used methaphor and analogy effectively and (4) paid attention to the sounds of words. Some of these question will naturally occur during you consideration of claim on the organization of its support, as well as during your review of audience and purposes.

Suggestion7: Review your Argument for Faulty Reasoning

Chapter 5 introduced some basic principles of logic that will help you set up a reasonable argument. The “informal fallacies” presented there are most easly detected during the revision stage. As a final step in reviewing your argument, read it thruoght or detected any unwitting fallacies, paayong special attention ti those that are particalarly common in the kind of argument you’ve written.

Suggestion 8: Use a Word Processor

Fortunately (some student would say unfortunenately), revising may lead to a drastic overhaul of your argment. But if you want your argument to be as good it can be, you won’t ignore the opportunity to make these major changes.Most student noe writers their papers on computers, which make large- and small-scale revising much easier than any other method. If you’re one of those few people who have resisted the move the computers, we strongly urge you to make the change. With a computer and a good-processing program, you can swith entire sections of a dreft around with ease; change word swiftly and even “globally” so that one word replaces another throughout an entire essay;and make corrections with no trace of erasures or correction fluid. Virtually all campuses have computer labs for their students, which save the expence of purchasing your own computers. And while a computer will not make you a better writer,it will give tou the chance to make yourself a better writers so get wired.