Finding new methods to improve might be difficult, but good editing is one approach to quickly improve your writings.
Editing your essay before submitting it may be the difference between a decent score and a great one, so it’s worth spending fifteen minutes or so before sending it off just going over it and making sure the structure and phrasing are as excellent as they can be.
First, you must know how to write an essay properly. After that, the most vital step is essay editing.
Essay editing comprises improving the coherence, flow, and readability of work while also correcting any grammatical, punctuation, and spelling problems.
To Improve Your Work, Essay Editors Conduct Four Tasks:
1. Structural Editing:
Structural editing means analyzing the manuscript as a whole in order to detect and correct any substantial structural flaws.
2. Substantive Editing:
Substantive editing includes selecting and resolving any flaws with the paper’s organization, readability, clarity, and flow.
3. Copy Editing:
Significantly enhancing the manuscript’s overall mechanics.
4. Proofreading:
Correcting any remaining mistakes in the document’s spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style.
Different Types of Essay Editing
Let us see the different types of essay editing in depth-
1. Structural/Developmental Editing:
Looking at the larger picture is an essential of developmental editing. When editing a dissertation, for example, the editor will take a step back and evaluate the dissertation’s purpose and major areas of interest. He or she will then assist the author in developing a general outline to support the dissertation’s flow and structure.
By the time you finish the first draft of your dissertation, you should have formulated a clear hypothesis, organized your major points, and established a general direction for your writing. If your initial draft isn’t well-structured, you’ll almost certainly need a rewriting service rather than an editing service.
- Reorganize the structure to ensure that the key points flow smoothly.
- Remove any redundancy or repetition.
- Any inconsistencies or logical weaknesses should be highlighted.
2. Substantive Editing:
Substantive editing is a type of intensive editing that involves going through an academic document’s overall structure, style, grammar, and spelling. The editor will discover and correct flaws with the document’s clarity, structure, readability, and flow throughout the substantive editing phase.
Some high-level rewriting may be necessary for some situations to ensure that the general hypothesis and related arguments are obvious and that the major points are presented logically and accurately.
- Clarify the essential ideas
- Improve the transitions between paragraphs.
- Examine the logic and quality of the argument.
- Make sure everything is in order.
- If necessary, restructure the wording.
3. Copy Editing:
When it comes to finishing an academic work, copy editing is critical. It performs a variety of tasks, including detecting and correcting mistakes in the text’s word usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, as well as ensuring that the author’s original message and voice are preserved.
During this step of the editing process, the editor will verify that the file maintains a consistent style and format throughout. He or she will also double-check for clarity, point out any contradictions in the argument, and double-check references to images, tables, and figures.
4. Proofreading:
The final step in the academic editing process is proofreading. The editor will check for any minor spelling, punctuation, and grammatical problems that were overlooked throughout the previous editing phases at this phase. The editor will also take care of any remaining formatting and referencing concerns.
- Errors in grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling should be corrected.
- Make sure you’re using the right words and using the right diction.
- Check the standards for referencing, formatting, and general style in the style guide.
Essential Essay Editing tips–
1. Begin by Establishing a Solid Framework:
With word processors now being the major tool for creating essays, dragging and dropping or copying and pasting paragraphs into a more logical structure has never been easier.
If you do this, make careful to reread the essay to make sure the phrasing matches the new sequence; otherwise, you could end up with a phrase that leads to the wrong paragraph. Knowing how to format your essay correctly is very important and the first essential tip.
2. Long Phrases and Paragraphs Should be Reduced:
Long sentences and paragraphs should be edited whether or not you’ve exceeded your word count since they’re more difficult to read and can be uninteresting or difficult to follow.
As a result, try to restrict phrases to two or three segments at most. If a paragraph becomes longer than three or four sentences, break it up and start a new one: a wall of words might be off-putting to the reader. If you’re typing your essay, leave a gap between paragraphs.
3. Keep Excessively Complex Language to a Minimum:
However, substituting complex terms for easy ones does not necessarily make you appear clever; for example, you may unintentionally select the incorrect synonym, failing to recognize that even similar synonyms might have significantly different meanings or implications.
Using large words when simple ones would serve, might come off as artificial and pompous; instead, try for clear, concise language to avoid coming across as verbose or snobbish.
4. Keep an Eye Out for Concepts and Words that are Repeated:
When you’re writing, it’s common to repeat yourself without noticing it, but the editing process is available to facilitate you catch this before your professor or lecturer notices.
Keep an eye out for concepts you’ve repeated as you read through your essay, and eliminate those that don’t contribute anything to your writing.
5. You Shouldn’t Rely on Spellcheck:
We’ve already given you this tip, but it’s worth repeating since it’s crucial! The spellchecker will not catch all of the mistakes in your essay. It will point out certain errors and misspellings, but it will not notify you if you have accidentally used the incorrect term. So, relying on spell checkers is not advisable.
6. Detecting Typos:
It’s believed that reading your work backwards increases your chances of catching mistakes. This is likely due to the fact that it gives you a fresh perspective on what you’ve written, making it simpler to notice obvious faults than if you read it in the order in which you wrote it and know what to expect.
Another technique is to print out your essay and go over it with a red marker, circling or highlighting all of the problems, then fixing them later on the computer. A printed version of a paper is typically simpler to read.
Conclusion
Essay editing might look like a difficult job for you, which needs to be done meticulously. To some extent, it is a bit hard to point out and correct all those little mistakes if you are not an expert.
At the same time, you do not want your essay to get rejected for a few silly mistakes. So, the best advice for you would be to check out the top 10 online essay editing services and choose one that suits you. Essay editing services are trustworthy and affordable which is why there is no harm in giving it a try.
-Isabell S.
