When you revise to improve organization, you look at the flow of ideas throughout the essay as a whole and within individual paragraphs. You check to see that your essay moves logically from the introduction to the body paragraphs to the conclusion, and that each section reinforces your thesis.

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1. Find your main point.
2. Identify your readers and your purpose.
3. Evaluate your evidence.
4. Save only the good pieces.
5. Tighten and clean up your language.
6. Eliminate mistakes in grammar and usage.
7. Switch from writer-centered to reader-centered.

How to revise:

1. Put your draft aside. Time away from your essay will allow for more objective self-evaluation.
2. Get feedback.
3. Construct a backward-outline of your essay.
4. Rethink your thesis.
5. Now that you know what you’re really arguing, work on the introduction and conclusion.
6. Proofread.

The writing process consists of different stages: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. Prewriting is the most important of these steps. Prewriting is the “generating ideas” part of the writing process when the student works to determine the topic and the position or point-of-view for a target audience.

1. 6 Steps to Self-Edit Essays.
2. Take a break from writing before you begin to edit your work.
3. Check the instructions in your assignment outline.
4. Check your thesis.
5. Check your body paragraphs.
6. Check your introduction and conclusion.
7. Proofread your paper a couple more times.
8. 6 Steps to Self-Edit Essays.

We can usually see other people’s written mistakes without a problem, but it’s a different story when we edit our own work. Self-editing is the process that every writer goes through after they complete a draft of their written work.

Here’s how to edit your own work.

1. Cut long sentences in two.
2. Axe the adverbs (a.k.a. -ly words)
3. Stick to one voice.
4. Remove extra punctuation.
5. Replace negative with positive.
6. Replace stuffy words with simple ones.
7. Remove redundancies.
8. Reduce prepositions.