Editing Essentials: approaches to unlocking your best work
We all know the satisfaction of having finished a full first draft of a piece of written work. After all the effort, hours, and energy spent, words are now on a page, and you have a complete version in front of you. Mission accomplished, right? If only that were the case...
The truth is, no one’s first draft is ever perfect. There will always be some value to editing your work, whether the changes are major overhauls (like restructuring an entire argument) or minor tweaks and polishes (like improving sentence clarity and checking for spelling errors). Indeed, studies into university students’ academic writing suggest there is a link between revising written work and improved performance1-3. Editing acts as a vital ‘quality-booster’ for everyone: academics, journalists, authors, or – quite simply – anyone who has ever written anything, ever! But incorporating the editing process into our work can be a struggle.
What makes editing a challenge?
Reflecting back on your own experiences of writing, you might relate to some of these practical, psychological, and physical barriers to engaging with editing:
Time pressure
We all have busy lives. Studying and completing writing for different purposes takes up time, but so do other things we have going on (both professionally and personally). It can be difficult to make the space for editing when facing various conflicting deadlines and responsibilities. Even if we originally plan time to edit, we may underestimate how long earlier stages in the writing process will take, leaving less (if any) time for thorough editing.
Writing self-efficacy and anxiety
‘Self-efficacy’ refers to our own judgements and beliefs about our ability to produce something or perform in a particular way4. With respect to writing, if we don’t believe that our efforts will produce the outcome we want, we feel little incentive to persevere. Beliefs about our abilities are often linked with writing anxiety, or our fear of failure5-7. Feeling underconfident in, and negative about, writing can also make us disinclined to engage in editing8. We may feel incapable of checking and improving work effectively, or simply assume that our first effort is as good as it will ever get.
Exhaustion
Writing can be an exhausting process, requiring substantial motivational resources to see it through. Many authors of fiction have written and spoken about how intensely physical and emotionally-charged the process of writing can be9, but the labour of writing is not always openly acknowledged in academic circles. At times, writing can feel scary, upsetting, and lonely. The fact that writing can be bound up with all sorts of difficult emotions10 can make the idea of sitting down to edit incredibly forbidding. It is not always easy to find the energy or willpower to do so.
How can we approach editing effectively?
Given the difficulty of finding the space for editing, both practically and psychologically, what can we do to make the process of editing our work more do-able, bearable, and valuable?
Plan for it. Try to view editing as an essential component of the writing process (not an afterthought) and make it an integral part of your plan from the beginning. Building in ample time for editing might involve working towards a ‘soft’ deadline in advance of the actual deadline. Through this, you can create space where you leave the first draft for a while (ideally a whole week, if possible) before you start editing. This slight separation in time can mean that you feel less bound up with the initial emotions and ideas associated with writing the first draft, granting you fresher eyes to look over the writing and make clearer judgements about it. If you are a student, you might find it useful to explore some of SLD’s resources on time management and independent study: SLD courses: Moodle
Aim to view it in a positive light. Try to view editing as an intellectually engaging exercise. Your goal is to maximise clarity, how can you meet that challenge? Editing is itself an important skill to hone, and so any aspects of your work you manage to improve can be viewed as a worthwhile achievement. Editing and exercising judgement about your own work develops both your reflection and writing skills (valuable in many circumstances, within and outside of academic settings).
Create a checklist. Sometimes editing can seem intimidating because we don’t know where to start. It’s a good idea to come up with a checklist of things you want to look out for when you return to look at the work. For example, you may want to ask yourself:
Does this actually address the assignment task/question and stay on-task throughout?
Have I included everything I planned to write about?
Does it flow as a single argument? Does the structure make sense, or would it be clearer if I re-ordered things?
Are there any sentences, or paragraphs, that could be clearer in their message?
Are there any obvious typos, grammar, or punctuation errors?
You might want to systematically focus on a different aspect each time you look over your work, like: structure/argument, clarity, and error checking. The Institute of Academic Development has some useful guidance on editing work in stages, including different questions you could ask yourself during each read through.
Read your work out loud. This might seem strange at first, but reading out loud forces you to slow down so you are less likely to skim over any errors. It can also make it easier to process what you have written, enabling you to think more carefully about the content and how readable your writing is.
Remember that editing has value for everyone. There is no secret “trick” to achieving perfect writing, so all academics, students, authors, and writers will struggle with (and benefit from) editing10. For students at any level, it doesn’t matter where on the grading schedule your first draft is sitting at: there is always something to be gained through editing. Even if your first draft is already great quality, careful edits might make the difference between a ‘very good’ piece of work, and an ‘excellent’ piece of work.
Remember that you’re not alone. Developing your writing skills can be a long and difficult journey. But it is a shared journey alongside your peers, experts in your discipline, and learning development staff. You might want to consider forming editing ‘retreat’ groups where you can sit and edit alongside your friends and then reward yourselves with a coffee or treat afterwards. If you are a student at the UofG, you can also book an appointment with a learning adviser in Student Learning Development (SLD) to discuss your writing and get some help planning your editing.
Further Reading
If you are a UofG student, you can follow the links from our homepage of SLD Moodle Courses to find resources on academic writing (including editing) tailored towards your College discipline.
For students studying in a scientific field specifically, chapter 14 on ‘Editing and Proofreading Your Work’ in ‘Writing for science students’11 is another excellent resource to help guide you through the editing process.
Finally, for some general guidance to help with editing and proofreading, check out the advice and worksheets available from the Institute of Academic Development.
References
1. Butler, J. A., and Britt, M. A. (2011). ‘Investigating instruction for improving revision of argumentative essays’. Written Communication, 28(1), 70–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088310387891
2. MacArthur, C. A., Philippakos, Z. A., and Ianetta, M. (2015). ‘Self-regulated strategy instruction in developmental writing’. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(3), 855–867.
https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/edu0000011
3. Song, Y., and Ferretti, R. P. (2013). ‘Teaching critical questions about argumentation through the revising process: effects of strategy instruction on college students’ argumentative essays’. Reading and Writing, 26(1), 67–90. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-012-9381-8
4. Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
5. Pajares, F., Johnson, M. J., and Usher, E. L. (2007) ‘Sources of writing self-efficacy beliefs of elementary, middle, and high school students’. Research in the Teaching of English, 42(1), 104-120.
6. Sanders-Reio, J., Alexander, P. A., Reio, T. G., and Newman, I. (2014). ‘Do students’ beliefs about writing relate to their writing self-efficacy, apprehension, and performance?’ Learning and Instruction, 33, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2014.02.001
7. Stewart, G., Seifert, T. A., and Rolheiser, C. (2015). ‘Anxiety and self-efficacy’s relationship with undergraduate students’ perceptions of the use of metacognitive writing strategies’. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 6(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2015.1.4
8. Paul, N., Lin, T.-J., Ha, S. Y., Chen, J., and Newell, G. E. (2021). ‘The role of achievement goal orientations in the relationships between high school students’ anxiety, self-efficacy, and perceived use of revision strategies in argumentative writing’. Journal of Writing Research, 12(3), 657–684. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2021.12.03.05
9. Clughen, L. (2014) ‘“Embodied Writing Support”: The Importance of the Body in Engaging
Students with Writing’. Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, 7(2), 283-30.
10. French, A. (2018). ‘Academic writing: anxiety, confusion and the affective domain: why should subject lecturers acknowledge the social and emotional aspects of writing development processes?’ Journal of Academic Writing, 8(2), 202–211. https://doi.org/10.18552/joaw.v8i2.487
11. Boyle, J., and Ramsay, S. (2023) Writing for Science Students, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. ProQuest Ebook Central: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gla/detail.action?docID=7203860.
Written by Dr Rosalind McKenna, ELA for the College of Medicine, Veterinary and Life Sciences