How to Start Editing Your College Essays More Efficiently 

0

College is all about essays. They are essays that constitute a lion’s share of your homework. You need to write them for your Economy, English, History, Arts, Geography, Management, and Marketing classes. And to do it successfully, it’s necessary to dig through your library or scholarly databases for appropriate sources, brainstorm ideas, craft an effective thesis, polish your paper’s structure, and provide convincing supportive evidence for your position. Nevertheless, while going through the agonies of writing their papers, students often tend to forget or deliberately ignore such an important component of essay writing as editing and proofreading. As a result, your essay may lose several points because of grammatical errors, run-ons, incorrect punctuation, syntax, or stylistic mistakes. Editing is critical to success of your academic paper. Therefore, a good few students rely on professional editors. Should you need any help with editting your essay, contact a reputable essay writing service and get your paper edited within the shortest possible time.

Still, they are not only professional editors that can help you create effective college papers. Below are some useful suggestions every college student should avail themselves of. Our tips will help you identify and fix major weaknesses in your writing and develop essential writing skills.

Anticipate Your Readers’ Response

Lots of students think that once they complete their essay, all that remains is to run spell-check and hand in the ready paper to a professor. Though using your spell-checker is a great idea, relying solely on it or some other programs that promise to help you create a flawless paper is unwise, to say the least. In truth, no program can predict or anticipate what your readers will feel or think while reading your essay. The onus is on you to anticipate your audience’s reaction to your writing and do your best to keep them engaged, interested, and satisfied with the way you’re presenting your argument.

Sometimes, such seemingly small errors as typos, awkward phrasing, or wrong word order may discourage or confuse your readers, not to say to discredit you as an author. Of course, you don’t want your readers to think of you as an inattentive and negligent writer. Therefore, it’s crucial that you cast a critical eye on what you’ve written. By doing so, you’ll be able not only to add the final improvements to your essay, but also refine your arguments, clarify some ideas, eliminate ambiguous points, and facilitate your audience’s deeper understanding of what’s being discussed.

Read Aloud

Some students find it somewhat childish to read their final drafts aloud. Still, in reality, such a technique can help you identify the major problems in your essay you might overlook. Be picky and never compromise on quality of your paper. Trust your intuition. If some parts bother you, revisit them over and over again until you’re fully satisfied with the way they read. Be alert to anything that seems odd, awkward, or out of place and make as many corrections to your text as it takes to make it sound perfect.

No Superfluity

It’s a rare student who doesn’t want to finish their essay as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, some students succumb to temptation to include even those words that don’t do important job in making their argument just to make their paper look bigger. We highly recommend that you refrain from using unnecessary or tautological phrases that just take up space within your paper. As any academic paper your essay should be concise, succinct, and to the point. If you can fit your idea into a single sentence don’t express it in three or five sentences.

When you’ll be editing your draft, pay close attention to even such small and seemingly insignificant words as “maybe” or “say.” You may want to substitute them with more academically appropriate equivalents as perhaps, probably, acknowledge, or claim. Not only will such words make your sentences more interesting and appealing, but also provide more useful information and deep your audience’s understanding of the subject discussed throughout your essay.

No Slang, Contractions, Jargonisms

Needless to say, you need to steer clear of slang and jargony that merely cannot be used in academic writing, unless the specificity of your paper implies using such words, say, when you’re researching the problem of swear language or specific features of slang in some languages. It’s also a good idea to avoid short forms in your academic writing. Your paper will do much better if you opt for full form. Moreover, make it a rule to spell out your acronyms the first time you use it in your writing. Thus, you’ll spare your reader the bother of looking up their meaning elsewhere.

We hope that our tips will come in handy next time you’ll be editing your essay.

Share.

About Author

Founded in 1994 by the late Pamela Hulse Andrews, Cascade Business News (CBN) became Central Oregon’s premier business publication. CascadeBusNews.com • CBN@CascadeBusNews.com

Leave A Reply