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First, you want to start basic revision which handles checking your grammar, correcting your misspelled words, and making sure your facts are valid and up to date. Having typos or misused grammar can instantly dismantle any credibility you have gained from your reader. Also a more difficult task is making sure your facts are bona fide and are current. This is so difficult because what could be true today may not be true tomorrow. For example, if I write a paper today saying that Obama is our president it would be true, however ten years from now, this would be false.
As Barry Gilmore mentions in this video, revision goes much farther than that. A good revision improves the paper's readability. Readability is very important aspect to your work. It will make it easier for the audience to extract information from your work and assist in keeping the reader's attention. A few good ways to do this are as follows:
- Eliminate distracting visuals
- Make sure you do not repeat information unless its completely necessary.
- Try to combine smaller sentences into larger, more complex sentences, which is a more efficient way to provide information to your audience
- Try to condense run-on sentences that ramble on endlessly. This can confuse your reader and loose their attention
- If you are writing to one of your colleagues, try to use jargon to help condense these run-on sentences. Jargon is "specialized or techincal language used within a particular group, organization or field." For example, for students this could be "dropping a class."
As if all that is not enough, be careful not to change the context in what you are trying to say. Often, when changing sentences around and replacing words, you can completely shift the meaning of your paper. This can confuse the reader, causing decreased readability.
If you follow these tips carefully, you should see a drastic improvement in your writing ability.
Sean H.
Reference:
Technical Communication in the Twentieth Century
Sean,
ReplyDeleteI like the topic that you wrote on. Revision is a vital part of our writing process and it is usually the one that we don't do enough of. One suggestion that I can give you is to make sure that you include a title to your blog. I did not originally know what the blog was about. It was very well written and I like how you incorporated the video into your post. Keep up the good work. Look forward to next weeks post.