What is the purpose of revising and editing writing?
What is the purpose of revising and editing writing?Before a business writing project is completed, it will go through a revision and editing process. Revision involves looking at your structure of the document from the reader’s point of view and making organizational changes that will improve the overall message and argument of your business document. Editing deals with mechanical aspects of the document and involves finding and correcting grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors that might prevent reader’s attention from being focused on your message. Writing and editing should be done during different sessions if time permits. The mind has a tendency to see what it expects rather than what is there when editing immediately after writing.
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Things to look for during the revision process
Revision of writing will occur before writing editing is done. Three different elements of the business writing will be examined during the revision process. The elements to be examined are as follows:
- Content and clarity – Does the document meet the needs of the reader? Is the information enough for readers to understand and act on your message and is information accurate? Is each sentence clear? Is their adequate supporting detail?
- Organization and layout – Does the document design make information easy to locate? Are transitions between ideas smooth? Are the most important ideas stressed? Are the first and last paragraphs effective?
- Style and tone – Is the message easy to read? Is the message friendly and free from biased language?
Each of the three areas/elements should have its revision done separately, so that by the end of the revision process you will have revised your document three separate times. Besides, brevity in writing is writing in a style that is brief, while at the same time covers all necessary points. To know more about this, you may visit our site.
What to look for during the editing writing process
During this stage you will be looking for mechanical type errors in the business document. Specific things to look at include the following:
- Sentence structure
- Subject–verb and noun-pronoun agreement
- Punctuation
- Word usage
- Spelling including the spelling of names
- Numbers
The following is a list of a few basic tips you can use during the final revision and editing writing process:
- If time permits try to allow at least a day in between the writing stage and revision/editing stage. Even a few hours is better than nothing.
- Go through the document looking for specific mistakes that you know you have a tendency to make more often than other mistakes.
- Go through the document looking for only one type of mistake each time. Errors are easier to spot using this method than when looking for several types of error at the same time.
- When checking for spelling mistakes go through the document backwards. This helps to focus on individual words as opposed to content.
Proper revision and editing can greatly enhance a business document.
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