Writing Help

Revision is the first round of changes that you'll make to your paper. This is just a first pass is designed to address the organization and structure of the paper, as well as the central ideas. 

These techniques can each be done by themselves, in sequence, or all at once, but before you start, it is a good idea to ask yourself this question: Does the project meet the assignment requirements? This does not refer to the page length, or some of the other details, what is mean is:

• Does the paper demonstrate my understanding of the topic?
• Does the paper address all of the ideas or components that the professor asked for?
• Does the paper effectively make an argument?

If the paper does not meet the assignment requirements, start there. Figure out what parts of the assignment are missing and include them. If you are not sure, ask your professor--they are the expert on what they want and are the only person who can truly tell you if you're on the right track. 

Outlining a paper that you have already written is super helpful because it acts like a mirror and shows you things you might have missed in the structure or organization of your paper. The outline can be as brief or as detailed as you want, depending on how long your paper is and how much of the paper you already have written.

To outline a paper you have already started writing, read each paragraph and write down the topic of the paragraph in the outline.

The outline will show you which ideas you actually write about, and can indicate where there is something missing. The missing information might be a key part of the paper, or a hole in the logic of the argument - do you talk about A and C, but never discuss B?

It can also be helpful to note how many sentences you spend on each topic or how many sentences long each paragraph is - that will tell you which ideas are much more fully developed (not to mention which ones you clearly have more to say about!). If a particular topic is much longer than everything else, it might be worth cutting some of the material for that topic so it better matches the length of the other parts of the paper, or narrowing the focus of the paper to just that topic and expanding it further.

On the other side, if any area is significantly shorter than the other parts of the paper, you'll be able to identify it and then decide if you want to expand it further or cut it out of the paper completely. 

Highlighting can be used in tons of different ways when revising your paper. 

• One of the best things to highlight is all the source material in the paper. This will show you how much of the paper if your words and how much is composed of quotations or paraphrases from sources. There should only be a few lines of source material in each paragraph, but keep in mind that different academic disciplines have different guidelines for just how much source use is too much, and different parts of a paper have different expectations - the literature review, for example, will have way more source use than any other part of the paper; on the other hand, conclusions generally do not have much, if any, source material.
• If outlining isn't for you, you can highlight each topic in a different color to make sure that each is discussed in a balanced way. This will tell you which ideas are much more fully developed (not to mention which ones you clearly have more to say about!). If a particular topic is much longer than everything else, it might be worth cutting some of the material for that topic so it better matches the length of the other parts of the paper, or narrowing the focus of the paper to just that topic and expanding it further. On the other side, if any area is significantly shorter than the other parts of the paper, you'll be able to identify it and then decide if you want to expand it further or cut it out of the paper completely. 
• Highlight each sentence (or paragraph, depending on the length of the paper) in a different color based on which topic is discussed in that sentence (or paragraph). This will help you ensure that a given topic is only discussed in the parts of the paper where it belongs, instead of with strays bits of the topic appearing at random - a hot pink section swimming in a sea of electric blue really stands out!

If you're not in a hurry and have print pages to spare, this is a super fun activity (or if the paper is a huge organizational mess and you're about ready to give up!) - it is more fun if you and a friend do it together. You can do this for each other's papers and compare the result with the original document - it can be very revealing!

1. Open the document and at the end of each sentence in your paper, start a new line. Print out the paper, and use scissors to cut apart each sentence. You should end up with a giant pile of paper strips - be sure there aren't any page numbers and that no sentences are split between two pages! Jumble them all together at random.
2. Now, read each sentence and sort them into separate piles based on which ones seem to go together. You don't even need to come up with labels or categories or anything, just go with your gut feeling about which sentences belong in the same pile. 
3. Once all the sentences have been sorted, try putting the piles into an order that might make sense for a paper - for example, one pile might feel like an introduction so it should go first, or another might feel like a conclusion so it should go last. 
4. Once the piles are in an order that suits you, try sorting out the sentences into an order that makes sense - this new order might be a good way to organize your paper! Read it through as a whole and if you like it, use the CTRL (or CMD) + F to find each sentence and put them in the new order.
5. It is also worth checking to see if there are any sentences that don't go with any others, or if there is one pile that is way bigger (or smaller!) than the others - this indicates that the pile should be subdivided into separate topics, or the lone sentence should be cut completely.