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Guide to Essay Editing: Methods, Tips, & Examples
May 18, 2023
6 min read
- Tags: Essay, Essay Editing
When it comes to essay writing, the process of editing is often glossed over and is reduced to last-minute connections. However, thorough essay editing helps you stand out from the crowd. A skillfully written essay not only involves impressive writing, but also meticulous editing.
In this article, we will walk you through the process of essay editing and understand why it is important. Without any further ado, let’s get to it!
What is essay editing?
Essay editing involves performing grammatical or structural checks in order to improve the readability and coherence of your essay. While most believe that editing an essay simply involves proofreading it, it is actually a much more extensive process.
Essay editing involves multiple processes, such as restructuring sentences and paragraphs, correcting tone or cohesiveness, eliminating fluff content and redundancies, and finally, proofreading.
Why is essay editing important?
Meticulous editing is crucial in improving the clarity and coherence of your ideas. It not only brings out the core message of your essay but also provides a proper structure to your essay.
Here are a few more reasons as to why essay editing is important:
1. Helps correct structural inconsistencies.
Effective editing helps detect structural and tonal inconsistencies that don’t fit in with a particular paragraph or the essay as a whole. These inconsistencies can then be rephrased, restructured, or completely eliminated from your essay.
2. Helps simplify your essay.
Complex words and run-on sentences make your essay verbose and obscure its core message. In order to establish a strong central idea, it is crucial to meticulously edit your essay. Through editing, you can not only refine and clarify the central message of your essay but also make it more readable.
3. Helps filter out unnecessary information.
Editing helps get rid of redundancies, filler, or fluff content which cleans up the sentences and paragraphs of your essay. Eliminating these redundancies makes your content more succinct, clear, and concise.
4. Helps correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.
The importance of spelling, grammar, and punctuation cannot be understated. A single misplaced comma can change the meaning of a sentence and create a poor impression on the reader. Proofreading ensures that such errors are not made. It involves correcting any major or minor spelling and grammar errors.
Now that we’ve understood the importance of essay editing, let’s take a look at the following example:
The mission of Voyager 1 was to go study the big gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, and then continue its journey beyond the solar system. As it journeyed on, it sent back lots of pictures and data about the planets it passed. One of the cool things it discovered was the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, which is a storm that’s been going on for centuries. It’s amazing that Voyager 1 was able to capture all of this information and bring it back to us on Earth.
Voyager 1 was launched with the aim of studying gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn and venturing beyond the solar system. While on its journey across the solar system, it captured numerous images and gathered relevant data on multiple planets. One of its most fascinating discoveries was the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, an ongoing storm lasting for centuries. The ability to gather information about previously unexplored terrains is certainly a feat achieved by Voyager 1.
As you can see, there are plenty of grammatical and tonal inconsistencies in the first example. There is also use of informal language which is not consistent with this essay type. The second example shows what the grammatically correct, tonally consistent, edited version should look like.
What does an editor look for in your essay?
Professional essay editing services are trained to spot the most minute of structural and grammatical errors and are trained in college, as well as admission essay editing. They not only help point out surface-level errors in spelling and punctuation but conduct an in-depth analysis of your essay.
Here’s what a professional editor looks for in your essay:
1. Errors in spelling and grammar:
This includes ensuring subject-verb agreement, conducting spellchecks on commonly misspelled words, or even maintaining consistency in the tense of your essay.
2. Errors in the use of technical terms:
This includes ensuring the appropriate usage of signs, symbols, and units of measurement.
3. Inconsistencies in referencing styles:
This task includes spotting errors and inconsistencies in major referencing style guides such as MLA, APA, and Chicago.
4. Issues in the layout:
This includes maintaining consistency in essay formatting and ensuring proper use of graphs, tables, images, and figures.
5. Inconsistencies in tone:
This involves simplifying run-on sentences, filtering out redundancies, and ensuring a consistent tone throughout the essay.
6. Logical gaps in arguments:
This includes detecting logical fallacies or gaps in arguments and making suggestions to correct these fallacies.
7. Plagiarism:
This involves thoroughly scanning the essay to ensure the originality of the content and detecting unintentional plagiarism.
8. Conformity to referencing guidelines:
This task includes cross-checking in-text citations and references and ensuring they conform to the prescribed guidelines.
9. Inconsistencies in formatting:
This includes correcting inconsistencies in prescribed formatting guidelines.
Why should you hire a human editor?
College essay editing requires significant expertise and attention to detail. Although essay writing tools such as Grammarly are useful in correcting surface-level errors, they are not complex enough to ensure 100% accuracy. They lack the human touch and are unable to detect various contextual and structural errors.
For instance, a proofreading tool will not detect any error in the following sentence, although it’s grammatically incorrect.
With who am I speaking?
It is clear that “I” is the subject in the sentence, hence the object should be “whom”. Such errors are ignored by online essay editing tools and require human intervention.
The following table will give you a better understanding of the differences between human and machine editing:
Steps to self-edit your essay
Although consulting a human editor will make your job significantly easier, the college essay editing cost can sometimes be a burden. If you prefer self-editing your essay, you can use the following steps to help you ace your assignment.
1. Take a break
It is challenging to identify errors and inconsistencies in your essay immediately after writing it. Make sure to take a break and return to your work later with fresh eyes. This will help you view your essay from different perspectives and identify problem areas. You can also do this by asking friends or family members to review your work and provide necessary feedback.
2. Start with major structural errors
Start off with a comprehensive overview. This includes creating a cohesive structure and ensuring the proper flow of arguments. Make sure that all your topics and concluding sentences highlight the importance of your thesis statement. You can also cut-and-paste parts of sentences or paragraphs to build momentum throughout your writing.
3. Condense wordy sentences and paragraphs
After rearranging the major paragraphs to ensure a smooth-flowing structure, it’s time to cut the fluff. This may include repetitive information, filler content, as well as redundancies. Cutting out unnecessary information makes your essay concise and to the point, allowing your readers to focus on the key points of your argument.
4. Simplify jargon
It’s important to limit the use of jargon and ensure that your essay is accessible and easy to understand. While technical terms can be used in certain contexts, make sure to use them sparingly and accurately. It is important to strike a balance between technical and non-technical language. This will help you can write an essay that is both informative and engaging.
5. Ensure proper use of punctuation
Avoid using lengthy run-on sentences that can be difficult to follow. Use clear, concise sentences that convey your ideas effectively. When it comes to academic writing, avoid using exclamation marks and em-dashes. They can be seen as highly informal and are usually used in stories or creative works.
6. Maintain consistency in formatting throughout your essay
Make sure to stick to your university’s formatting and style guidelines when writing essays. This includes using headings and subheadings correctly, and ensuring that the font size and style are consistent throughout your essay. You can also make key points stand out by using bold or italicized text when necessary.
The above pointers show how editing essays is tedious and can be time-consuming. As editing experts, we can make the editing process simpler for you.
To reduce your challenges while writing essays, we have created extensive resources for you. You can bookmark the following resources and revisit them to clarify any doubts about essay writing!
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