A Few Words about Essay Editing

Good essays have good topics that are thoroughly addressed with relevant examples. Excellent essays need to be perfect in many other ways. The higher up you go in your studies, the less room for error remains. To take your essay from good to excellent, here are some editing tips.

Syntax

Sentence structure or syntax is a key element of an essay that flows well. Your reader will often hear the essay in his or her mind while reading it silently and a poorly organized sentence sticks out in this context. It can make a solid point seem less relevant. Read over your essay aloud to catch clumsily worded sentences. If your essay is in a language that you are not native to, this part of the process becomes even more important.

Spelling

This is an issue that essay writers of all ages can appreciate. Particularly as most essays are typed rather than written, spell checking software has lulled many of us into a false sense of security. A spell check will miss errors such as “beer with me, I’m knew to this”. Ask another human being who happens to have exceptional spelling skills for help if you know this is your downfall. For exam situations where help isn’t an option consider preparing in advance by brushing up on your spelling.

Punctuation

Knowing when to include a comma and when not to can seem straightforward but it’s an easily overlooked mistake. Added to this, many people have become accustomed to certain stylized punctuation techniques such as multiple exclamation marks or combining exclamation and question marks. These can be quite dramatic in comic books but serve no real purpose in academic writing. The rules you need to follow are too extensive to address in a single article but look them over before you write your next essay.

Citations

An essay that in any way references the work of another author requires proper citations. Without these you may accidentally venture into the field of plagiarism and severe penalties can be assigned to you. An important reason to consider your citations in the process of editing is that you may have intended to include all citations and missed out one entirely.

Consider all of these aspects of the editing process and anything else that come to you for a well put together essay.