How to Edit an Essay: Experts Opinion
Once you are through with writing your essay, you need to revise and proofread it to warranty that it is perfect. Conducting opposite edits and revisions is the ideal means of producing a perfect essay. Proper editing, like writing, is a skill that you need to perfect with time. Each article requires skillful editing even the ones written by professionals. However, some students do not know how to edit essays. The majority presume it is all about correcting all the grammatical, spelling, and punctuation mistakes they come across when revising their work. Well, if you are one of these students, it is high time that you enhance your editing skills.
Essays editing necessitates more than just correcting the grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors in an essay. It also requires you to go through your work and check if the content it incorporates corresponds to the topic in question. Additionally, you need to ascertain that your essay ideas flow in a smooth and systematic manner. And, this is what makes the editing part of essay writing one of the most cumbersome tasks. Nonetheless, it is important to edit your essays as you would not want your ignorance to affect your overall academic performance. Thus, to learn how to edit an essay, consider the tips below.
What you need to involve in editing
To edit your article like an expert, you first need to know what editing an essay is and what it involves. This will not only help you produce a great article but also give you the grades you have been longing for. So, what is professional essay editing and what does it involve?
Essay editing is the essay writing process of refining an article to enhance the organization and structure, flow, and readability while ascertaining that it is error-free.
As aforementioned, essay editing involves more than just correcting the spelling, grammatical, and punctuation mistakes in an article. When going through your work, not only do you need to omit and correct all the errors that it has but also ensure that the content corresponds to your essay topic. You need to warranty that the essay ideas you incorporate in your article adhere to the thesis statement of your essay. Additionally, you also need to ascertain that your essay has a smooth and systematic flow. Moreover, your paper ought to have a coherent and logical structure. This will make it easy for the audience to understand what you are talking about in your work. Also, you need to ensure that you prune long sentences and paragraphs as well as use simple vocabulary and phrases.
Types of essay editing
To refine your paper and make it perfect, Peter Martinson from customessayorder.com states that there are three types of essay editing that you can use. These include;
Substantive edit
A substantive edit is the type of essay editing which involves locating and addressing any issues or problems which have an association with the cohesion, readability, precision or intelligibility, and flow of your paper.
During this stage, you not only need to ensure that you organize your ideas well but also ascertain that your article is easy to read and that the audience will not encounter any difficulties trying to comprehend it. Additionally, you need to ensure that your paper encompasses transitional sentences which enable it to have a smooth and systematic flow.
Structure edit
Structure edit is another type of essay editing which involves viewing your essay as a complete unit to enable you to identify and discourse any fundamental structural issues.
When you edit your essay, you need to certify that your essay structure corresponds to the structure of an essay. It needs to have an introduction, body, and conclusion, with all the information you have in the correct part. Your thesis statement ought to be in the introduction paragraph and not the body. Also, your conclusion should have a summary of what your essay is about and not any new information that you do not have in the rest of your essay.
Copy editing and proofreading
This is another type of essays edit which involves enhancing the mechanics of your document as a whole as well as correcting any spelling, punctuation, style, and grammatical mistakes in your essay.
You ought to check the paragraphs and sentences of your essay and ascertain that there are no long sentences or paragraphs. Additionally, you need to check that your essay does not contain any complex wording, vocabulary or phrases which will make it difficult for you to convey your message or the readers to understand what you are talking about.
Read your essay
As aforementioned, you need to go through your paper after writing it to ensure that it complies with all the guidelines of essay writing. Not only does it need to be error-free but it also adheres to your essay topic.
However, you may tire out from the whole writing process. Hence, this can make it difficult for you to spot all the mistakes that your essay contains. Well, take a rest after writing your essay so that you can refresh your mind and body. After, get back to your essay and read it out loud. Go through it more than once. Also, you can read it to a friend or ask them to revise it.
Check your essay for grammar mistakes
Grammatical errors are one of the key things which make students get low scores on their essay assignments. Hence, when editing your essay, you need to ensure that it is free from grammatical mistakes. Revise it as much as you can and ensure that it does not comprise any long sentences, complex wording, or vague ideas. This will help boost the quality of your work thereby enabling you to get that ‘A’ that you have been yearning for.
Share for feedback
Another essential tip that you can use to edit your essay is sharing for feedback. You can ask experts from professional and reliable essay writing companies such as Edu Jungles to revise your essay and give you feedback. This will help you learn of the common areas you are bound to make mistakes thereby enabling you to work and perfect on it. Additionally, doing so can help you learn of new ideas that you can use in your essay hence making it impressive.
In conclusion, editing a college essay is daunting as it involves more than just correcting the errors it has. However, that should not discourage you from revising your article and getting a good grade. Above are some tips that you can use to learn how to edit your paper like an expert and get the ‘A’ that you have been dreaming about.
Author: Leon Edmunds
About the author:
Leon Edmunds began work in 2006. Since then, he has tried his hand at SEO and team communication management. He also writes for blogs and works as an academic writer at Edujungles.com, a professional essay writing service. His main interests are content marketing, communication skills development and blogging. Every day he is looking for new ideas to help people achieve their career goals. His team working as one ideal vehicle.