Revising

1. Keep your audience in mind. (Link to Audience Analysis handout) 2. Try to remove yourself from the essay. Look at it as though you know nothing about the subject or where the paper is going. 3. Revision does NOT EQUAL editing. Simply proofreading a first draft is not considered revising. Revision takes into account the ideas present in the essay and how those ideas are introduced to the reader and how effective the writer supports and argues for a main point. 4. Do not consider revision as the final step in the writing process. Because writing is recursive, revising may occur in the middle of the writing process and again later. Whenever you go back and rethink your ideas or change what you have written, you are revising. 5. Editing and proofreading should only be used when you are polishing the paper for a final draft. When editing and proofreading, you are looking for punctuation, spelling, and grammatical errors.