The Writing Process
  • Revising

    • Revising

    When you finish writing your essay, you should revise it. After you revise it, you may need to return to either of the previous stages (prewriting or writing) to make improvements to your writing. You also may need to do additional drafting.

    Quote about drafting

    "Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy."

    -Author Anne Lamott (from a GMU Writing Center article)

    Many people divide the revising stage into revising and editing. Revising focuses on making changes to improve the clarity of your ideas and organization. Editing focuses on making changes to improve the clarity of your grammar. Revising should generally be completed before editing.

    Here are some questions you can use when you are revising your essays, giving feedback to a peer, or evaluating a sample essay.

    Revision questions

    1. Does the introduction provide the general information a reader needs in order to understand the topic?
    2. Does the introduction end with an effective thesis? Does it match the style of the essay?
    3. Do each of the body paragraphs begin with an effective topic sentence?
    4. Are the body paragraphs sequenced in a logical order?
    5. Look at each body Do the supporting sentences support the topic sentence?
    6. Look at each body Are the supporting sentences sequenced in a logical order?
    7. Look at each body Is there enough development? Are there more details or examples that would help the reader?
    8. Look at each body Does the concluding sentence close the paragraph logically?
    9. Does the conclusion paragraph start by restating the thesis?
    10. Does the conclusion paragraph have a suggestion, prediction, or opinion at the end?

    Self-check

    You should always read through your essay to identify mistakes you have made. Try to finish your drafting with enough time to leave your essay and then come back to it to make revisions. As you revise your own work, you may need to add, delete, or move text. Mark any parts of your essay that you want to ask a friend/tutor to help you with. You should also proofread for mechanical errors (spelling, grammar, etc.). You may be surprised how many errors you are able to identify on your own.

    Here are some strategies for proofreading:

    1. Start by simply reading through your essay for errors. Especially in timed writing, this is an easy way to clean up your mechanics and present a more professional essay.
    2. Look through your essay for basic grammar that you know. For example, you can check to make sure every sentence has a subject and a verb (and that they agree).
    3. If you are not writing for a test, try reading out loud. This may help you identify more errors.
    4. Read the essay out loud. We often notice that something doesn't make sense when we hear it.
    5. Read the essay backward (paragraph by paragraph).
    6. Look at only one paragraph and then close the document and come back to it later to repeat this. Do this paragraph by paragraph until you've looked at it all.

    Get feedback and make changes

    If you are not writing for a test, have a friend or a tutor review your writing before you submit it to your teacher. Then use the feedback you get to make changes. If your teacher gives you feedback on one draft before the final draft is due, make sure you use it to improve your essay.

    Many teachers use symbols like the following to mark specific types of errors. If your teacher uses codes, make sure you clearly understand what the codes mean and how to fix the error.

    Exercises

    Exercise 1: Respond to Feedback

    Read this student's essay. Then look at the comments from the teacher. Specific parts of the text are underlined when feedback is connected to a specific part of the paragraph. The bullet points list the feedback the teacher provided.

    Review the feedback and decide what changes you would need to make before the next draft.

    Smart Homes vs Traditional Homes

           Some advantages and disadvantages between traditional homes and a smart home are technologically significant. A smart home is defined like properties* where devices can be controlled remotely by smartphone or other devices connected to the internet. In a traditional home you need to turn on/off the lights or close/open the windows manually, while in a smart home, you can press only one button and you can have the control over all your home wherever you are with an Internet connection. However, there are pros and cons between these two options of homes. Advantages include energy efficiency and savings, while disadvantages include security and internet reliance.

    • This is awkward

           Even though smart home technology is more energy-efficient than traditional home there are also some problems associated with them. The initial cost to transform your traditional home into a smart home is expensive. However, once installed everything the* electronic components and appliances for smart homes are designed to work with less amount of energy. As a result, the savings on gas, electric and water are reflected in your bills. You can save money diminishing the waste of water or gas because the smart energy devices can avoid excessive use of energy. Also, the savings and the control of heating and air conditioning is totally different than a conventional installation in a traditional home. For example, “The first way in which smart homes save energy is heat monitoring. Old school thermostats are rarely capable of properly keeping track of the heat in your home. Smart homes use multiple sensors to measure the exact temperature and therefore have a better knowledge of how to heat it” (https://www.smart-energy.com/features-analysis/how-smart-homes-save-energy/) with these changes in your home you can approach the energy and save money if you utilize the correct sensors in a practical way. These improvements help you to use the energy as efficiently as possible a difference than a traditional house where you can’t make improvements or monitoring the consumption in your energy. 

    • add "including" here

           It’s very expensive convert traditional homes into smart homes. At the beginning you will need some main devices like switches, hubs, change some traditional outlets to smart outlets to automate lighting, climate or some products that currently are not smart yet, you must change* the most appliances to smart appliances that support the new technologies and those can be connected to Internet. Besides you will need a new security system to protect your network and your Internet from hackers or malicious people. Therefore, the new digital and modern appliances and devices will result in a strong investment, and it will necessarily include a new budget for maintenance because the new devices are often more expensive and more sophisticated to repair than their traditional counterparts. In contrast with traditional homes where you can fix some issue in your home easily or found someone to fix it, with the smart homes you need to find someone who has the expertise and knowledge about smart things. Many handymen are not skilled enough in this field yet and finding how to fix these smart home technologies could not be easy and cheap than stuff in traditional homes.

    • This should be a new sentence
    • vt

           However, if you have decided to transform your traditional home in a smart home “The convenience factor here is enormous. Being able to keep all of the technology in your home connected through one interface is a massive step forward for technology and home management” (https://edtechbooks.org/-rXei), but if you want to enjoy these full capabilities you should have a good and stable Internet connection, and often another Internet service to have redundance, because a smart home without a reliable Internet connection will not work properly. For instance, if you live in an area where the internet connection is poor, you could experience serious issues because your smart home devices might not respond correctly. Besides if you want to control your home or your devices since your work or another remote place, you will not be able to do it. 

    • This is a great quote, but it should not be part of your topic sentence. Begin your paragraph properly, then use the quote to support your controlling idea.
    • Runon sentence

           The security is another very important point, whereas a traditional home is secure because the data or the information is not expose, in smart homes are at risk of getting hacked, while more devices are connected to Internet there are more probability to be attacked. The hackers can learn about your routine, stole important data, images, videos, take the control of surveillance cameras, doors, lights, alarms and everything with a connection in the network. On the other hand, in a traditional home, you can be safe for hackers, but you should be careful to thieves who may be attracted by unsecure traditional homes than a surrounded and equipped home with cameras and alarms. Nowadays many older people don´t like the idea of a smart home because they think “it easy for burglars to get into our home, many people may refrain from those smart home technologies and rather rely on their old-school locks, even if those locks are also quite unsafe” (https://environmental-conscience.com/smart-homes-pros-cons/) but unless you have enough expertise or knowledge in programming or hacking you won’t be able to break the security in a smart home.

    • End your topic sentence here

    Your house represents and express the style of living that you want. The traditional home can be more warmth and reflect a natural lifestyle while a smart home is completely automatized house with everything programable. There are many important advantages to smart homes like the energy efficiency and the savings that you can achieve having a smart home. However, there are also some problems related to smart homes associated with the initial costs, with security problems and the internet reliance. Although many traditional homes are being transformed into smart homes to manage the energy efficiently and help the environment with these technologies, we need to be careful improving security in our devices and network to have a secure place where we might live.

    Sources

    https://edtechbooks.org/-Insm 

    https://edtechbooks.org/-GcMf 

    https://edtechbooks.org/-Ctto 

    **Complete essay comments**

    • Your body paragraphs sometimes do not have clear topic sentences and concluding sentences. 
    • I think your body paragraphs a slightly out of order.
    • Your TurnItIn score is too high. Check your information and add (or correct) citations.
    • Find the author(s) and year to put in the citation in the paragraph. You also need page numbers or paragraph numbers for direct quotes.
    • Watch for simple grammar mistakes: mainly subject-verb agreement, verb tense, and infinitives

    This content is provided to you freely by EdTech Books.

    Access it online or download it at https://edtechbooks.org/academic_b_writing/revising.