Writing is an activity that invites slowness and reflection. Its importance lies precisely in its nature: it allows you to review, reconsider, and polish your claims before sending it off to your audience. Anyone can jot down a few thoughts on a piece of paper or in a message, and there are indeed benefits to doing so. But when we talk of a final paper, a written assignment, or an article, you want to avoid sending it off without any editing, for many reasons.

One, learning to write with an audience in mind takes time. Your first attempts to write, as those of everybody else, will have logical gaps among sentences or paragraphs. When you wrote them, you, being inside your mind, know exactly what the connection is. But your reader is not in your mind, and the explication needs to be made explicit.

Two, our first draft likely includes spoken lingo, abbreviations, sentence constructions that do not follow grammar use. These are all unproblematic in informal contexts, such as talking with a friend. But they need to be polished in formal settings, such as your final paper. A very often used opening is “It was like…”, which can almost always be substituted by a more apt verb, e.g., “it resembles…”; “I felt as though…”; “I saw it as…”.

Three, in our first draft, almost always we express our immediate response to an assignment. This means that your first go will have your ideas around which to build your paper, but the paper is not built yet. It is not even there.

The sentence level

Re-reading what you have written is an essential step towards a satisfactory piece of writing. Try to set a goal every time you read through what you have written. Here some easy steps that you can take:

• Do a first read looking for typos, grammatical errors, etc. Low-stake editing.
• In another read, ask yourself the following questions: “what am I saying in this sentence?” This exercise will help you catch repetitions within the same paragraph or sentences that are not really saying all that much (e.g., very general claims). It will also be of help in following passages, when you move on the level of paragraph construction (more below).
• Individuate list, of all sorts, and ask yourself whether you really need them. Often times, we tend to use three adjectives where one is enough. Or, we may list many items for fear of not being inclusive. Recurring examples are “social, cultural, political, and economic.” Chances are that you do not need all of these in your paper – you are almost surely focusing on one aspect. We know they are all interconnected, but your paper is not covering all of them.
• Avoid passive constructions if you can. As a rule of thumb, the passive voice is relevant in two occasions. One, when the subject is not important, and you want to emphasize the action. Two, when you do have a subject, but you want to emphasize the object that received this action.
• Check those dependent clauses: are they depending from a main sentence?! If there is more than one, make sure the verbs are conjugated accordingly.
• Avoid repetitions. Most common ones: “Personally, for me, I…” – yes, it is you. No need to state it thrice. Variations include “Personally, I …”; “In my opinion, I view / I think that…”.
• Avoid empty sentences. My favorite: “The talk I listed to was very interesting.” Stating that something is interesting does not make it so. You need to explain why, in what measures, to whom. This requires contextualizing the object of your attention.
• Punctuation matters. A lot. It sets the cadence to your sentence, and conveys meaning. Check your sentences: if they have more than 5 words and no punctuation, chances are that you are missing out on some commas.
• Always, always, always work with a dictionary open. Check out if the verbs that you are using are the most apt – do they really convey the point you are making in the sentence? Is there a better verb? Etc.

The paragraph level

A famous methods to construct paragraph was formulated by Eric Hayot in his The Elements of Academic Style (2014). It is called the Uneven U paragraph; if you google it, you will find plenty of references and pieces on what it is an how it works. The theory is that your paragraph should start from general ideas, to details, and then tie back to the general claim made in the opening of the paragraph. For example, in the following paragraph taken from Hayot’s nook (page 61), the author beings with a general statement, moves to introduce something relevant to this paragraph, adds evidence with different levels of detail, and then concludes with a abstract claim based on the evidence just presented.

Naturally, not all paragraphs MUST have this structure – sometimes you may have so much evidence, that you decide to tie the conclusion at the end of the paragraph that comes right after.

Rules of thumb

• If paragraphs are one page long – something is wrong. Go back to it, break it at least into two. Chances are that you are using too many “However,” “Therefore,” continuously revising the connection. It won’t read well, nor be strongly coherent.
• If sentences are 6/7 lines long, check again. As with paragraphs, chances are that you are using too many subordinates, making the sentence convoluted.
• Stop feeling. Say things as they are. Go back and remove “I feel that…”, “I think that…”. You are the author of this paper – it is clear that your thoughts are those expressed in the writing. If they are not yours, they are properly cited, right?

Resources for editing

Week 11 of Belcher’s Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks.

How to use commas.

Examples of the Uneven U Paragraphs.