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I am an experienced academic passionate about inspiring individuals to aim high. I have assisted multiple students and early career academics to achieve their goals.
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I am an experienced academic passionate about inspiring individuals to aim high. I have assisted multiple students and early career academics to achieve their goals.
Out of the three final stages of the 7-step writing process (drafting, editing, and proofing), editing is by far the most time consuming as it should make up 25% of the overall time you spend on your assignment. Sadly, many students don’t realize this and therefore they don’t leave enough time to properly edit their work prior to submission, meaning it is not as well refined as it could have been.
Editing should only begin once the first full draft of the assignment has been completed (see my previous blog on step 5). Whilst drafting is about ensuring all the content is included in the assignment, the point of editing is to:
To properly do a good job of editing you need to be prepared to write multiple drafts and this is what takes time. Many students are pushed for time close to the deadline and only end up doing one or two full drafts before submission. However, the simple truth is that the more drafts you write, the more well-refined the work will be in the end. From my 20 years’ experience of academic writing, I have learnt that I need to do at least five or more full drafts to fully ensure my work is as polished as possible. It is also important to leave time between drafts for ideas for improvement to simmer and this is another reason why 25% of the time spent on an assignment should be devoted to editing.
Believe it or not, re-drafting as part of the process of editing your assignment involves seven distinct aspects:
Having a clear and coherent structure means that your work will be straightforward and logical to read. Coherence and logic are often core aspects of assessment making criteria because they take hard work and critical thinking for students to achieve. A good structure can only be achieved through writing multiple drafts!
Strengthening the structure requires taking a step back and thinking about what points work best where and how to ensure every paragraph builds on that before it. Using the WEED model (see my previous blog on writing a literature review for more on this) is essential for ensuring your paragraphs are strong. During the editing phase it is important to ensure all the core paragraphs are similar lengths and you don’t have some really long ones and other really short ones as this can really annoy markers! Make sure that each paragraph makes just one point and that there is no repetition within and between them as this is something that can really lose you marks.
Any good assignment needs to have a clear narrative or argument running through it, from beginning to end. This principle applies whether it’s a 1000-word essay or an 80,000-word PhD thesis! Each section of your assignment and each paragraph must relate to your overall argument as clearly as possible. An uninformed reader is someone who is not necessarily a subject expert. When editing your work make sure that your argument is explicit and there is no doubt about what each paragraph is saying in relation to it. It is important to keep in mind that your marker will read your work only once so your argument needs to be as clear as possible.
During the editing phase always make sure every point you make is clearly supported by either evidence or examples as this enhances clarity and makes your work better to read. Academic scholarship is the art of using a diverse range of source material to create your own argument. Ideally, you want to demonstrate to your marker that you are an academic scholar and that you can use the research you have collected to address the task you have been set.
As detailed in step 5, in the drafting phase of writing the focus should not be on the word count and the first full draft is usually some way over the word count for this reason. However, in the editing phase, one of the main goals is to refine the draft work until it is under the required word count. The process of reducing the words is not just about achieving less words, but it’s about ensuring your writing is as concise and succinct as possible. Avoiding ‘waffle’ or verbosity should be your primary concern here. Again, this takes time and involves reading and re-reading your work multiple times so that you can spot what words, phrases and sentences require refinement.
To avoid plagiarism, and so that you can demonstrate academic scholarship, it is essential to ensure you do not over-rely on any of your sources. Look to ensure you demonstrate the use of a variety of different sources for each of your points and that you cite the most appropriate sources in the right places. It is good practice to compare and contrast sources with one another to show critical analysis and awareness of research on your topic. This is your final opportunity to ensure your assignment makes the best use of all of the research work you have done so spend time on this!
Finally, something that really demonstrates to a marker that you have not spent enough time editing is any disparity between the sources you cite in the text of your assignment and those cited in the reference list at the end. This takes time and should be checked thoroughly after every draft during the editing phase.
Once you have completed this 6th step of the 7-step writing process you're ready to move on to the final proof-reading stage. Check out my next blog to see step 7 of how to write a great assignment: final checks.
Get help from Gibbons Academic with your academic writing NOW by booking an online session or sending your draft work for review and detailed written or verbal feedback with suggestions for improvement from an expert.