Revision

Maybe the single most common piece of advice that writers and writing teachers offer is to revise—to revise frequently and prudently.

The most important revision processes don’t focus on revising sentences or fixing grammar mistakes. Instead, they focus on strategies that allow you to evaluate the higher order concerns in your writing: big-picture revising, adding & deleting sections, and moving sections into better places.

For analyzing the higher order concerns behind your writing, we provide three methods: feedback, reverse outlining, and a thesis check.

We also provide one method better suited for improving sentence clarity: The Paramedic Method.

Resources related to feedback

• University of Maryland, Baltimore Writing Center: big picture revision. This resource is helpful for asking questions about your argument and paragraphs.
• The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: an overview of the basic revision process. This resource is useful as a last minute checklist before turning in an assignment.
• Calvin University: What not to do while revising.

Feedback

Feedback is when someone other than yourself reads an unfinished version of your draft and provides constructive criticism on how and where to improve it.

Strong feedback focuses on higher order concerns, the big picture issues, rather than lower order concerns. Higher order concerns are characteristics that are integral to the central purpose you’re trying to communicate, such as the thesis, main argument, and organization. Lower order concerns focus on sentences and mechanics (grammar and punctuation).

Feedback helps us notice things we could not before because our friends sometimes look for different characteristics in writing than we do and that can help. It can also mimic the audience that will eventually read the paper.

Where can I get quality feedback?

• Rhetoric Center
  • We highly recommend taking your assignment to the Rhetoric Center for feedback.
  • You can walk into the Rhetoric Center for a drop-in session or schedule an appointment via email or phone.
  • The Rhetoric Center consultants are trained to give feedback throughout all stages in the writing process. Because of their training, the consultants know what to look for in a draft and are skilled at identifying what should be improved before the draft is turned in.
  • You can walk into the Rhetoric Center for a drop-in session, or schedule an appointment via email or phone.
• Students
  • In addition to the Rhetoric Center, other students can provide invaluable feedback. You can have a roommate, classmate, or coworker review your drafts. For this, use the WAC Clearinghouse, Colorado State University handout on peer review.

No matter where you get your feedback, these questions will guide the person giving you feedback to focus on higher order concerns:

• Do I understand the assignment prompt?
• How do or don’t I fulfil the professor’s requirements?
• What is the purpose of my paper as you understand it?
• Do I argue my thesis—and only my thesis?
• Is my thesis clear and specific?
• Do my transitions clarify connections between parts and move my argument forward?
• Is my tone professional or too casual?

By the way, some of these questions could be answered yes or no. Don’t settle for yes or no; ask for specifics on how your paper does or doesn’t satisfy expectations.

I have my feedback, but how do I apply it?

The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill created a feedback resource. For a guide on how to apply your feedback, go to the bottom of the page and use the sections “What to do with the feedback you get.”

Reverse outline

A reverse outline is a creative method of reorganization used when the paper is already written.

Need to see an example? This video by The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill explains everything you need to know about a reverse outline.

Consider the following strategies when reverse outlining:

• Reflect on how the outline relates to the assignment prompt.
  • Are you missing anything from the prompt?
  • Do you have anything extra?
• Reflect on how the outline relates to your thesis.
  • Does the outline argue your thesis (i.e., what you say you are going to argue)?
  • Does the order of parts of your thesis match the order of the outline?
• Consider where you break paragraphs:
  • Why is there a break here? Do the ideas change or did you only break paragraphs because of the length?
  • What unifies this paragraph?
  • Should all of these ideas be separate?

Resources related to reverse outlining

• The Writing Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison: A step-by-step guide to reverse outlining with an example (skip the example if unnecessary).
• Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL): A practical guide on two different reverse outlining techniques
• The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: An in depth anaylsis of reverse outlining from; this resource is helpful but lengthy

Thesis check

A thesis check is a strategy for eliminating unnecessary material from an argumentative paper. In an argumentative paper, the entire paper is used to argue the claim made in the thesis statement, which is normally found in the introduction.

This strategy is geared towards argumentative papers in the humanities but can also be adapted for other types of papers (such as scientific, summary, and reflective papers). Please visit “The central idea” of our Writing Process page for help with writing a thesis.

Here is a step-by-step process for performing a thesis check:

1. Read a body paragraph of the paper.
2. Reread the finalized version of your thesis statement.

3. Consider: Does this paragraph advance my thesis statement?

   If the answer is yes, keep it. (To get a convincing yes, also ask how the paragraph advances the thesis.)

   If the answer is no, you have three options: remove the paragraph, revise the thesis, or change the paragraph so that it does argue your thesis.

   If the answer is “part of it,” then find the part that doesn’t advance your thesis and apply one of the three options from the “no” response (see above).

4. Move to a new paragraph and repeat the process.

For further assistance, please visit the Rhetoric Center; we love to help with thesis checks!

The Paramedic Method

Coined by Richard Lanham in Revising Prose, the Paramedic Method helps improve sentence clarity. Use this method for choppy and confusing sentences.

The Paramedic Method brings to life dull writing and it has a step-by-step method:

1. Circle prepositions and remove some.
2. Box forms of the verb “to be,” and remove some.
3. Find the “action” or verb.
4. If a complicated verb is used, change to a simple one.
5. Make the doer the subject. Lanham calls this “who’s kicking whom.”
6. Omit pointless introductions.
7. Omit repetition.

Further Paramedic Method advice

For clarification, removing “slow wind ups” means get to the point and don’t waste time getting there. Sometimes students write things such as “Throughout the course of history…” or “there have been many wars throughout our time on earth…” This is pointless; remove the lengthy wind ups.

It's worth noting that it’s tough to remove a preposition if you don’t know how to find a preposition. The University of Richmond, Writing Center breaks down the different parts of language in the Paramedic Method to help you write clear and concise sentences.

To watch the Paramedic Method in action, watch this funny and clever video: The Paramedic Method: A Gastrogrammatical Edudrama.