Revision Versus Editing

Though we often conflate the terms, in writing studies, scholars make a distinction between revising and editing. Though the processes are intertwined, let's look to Easy Writer to help us make the distinction.

Revising

According to Easy Writer, “Revising means using others’ comments along with your own analysis of the draft to make sure it is as complete, clear and effective as possible" (4B).

Easy Writer has a good list of questions to get you started on revising. As you can see by these questions, revising is focused on making "global" changes to your paper. These are bigger concerns about the paper overall. If you remember from Doug Down's article “Rhetoric: Making Sense of Human Interaction and Meaning-Making," rhetoric is "epistemic" in that it creates meaning. A lot of this meaning-making happens in the revision process, as you might end up writing and re-writing your thesis statement or claim as you work through your ideas in your writing and revision.

Revision can include making some more substantive changes to your paper, like moving paragraphs, deleting paragraphs, changing thesis your thesis statement, and altering the paper to better meet the needs of your audience.

Since revision can include some major changes, writers often revise first, though it is an ongoing process that you will continue to do until you turn the paper in (and some scholars claim that the process never ends!)

Editing

According to Easy Writer, “Once you are satisfied with your revised draft’s big picture, edit your writing to make sure that every detail is as correct as you can make it for the readers you plan to share it with” (4C).

Easy Writer also has a good list of questions to get you started on editing. Again, as you can see from these questions, editing is more about "local" issues; you edit individual sentences and are less concerned with creating meaning. Rather than changing and developing meaning, editing is more about making your paper meet particular conventions and standards of academic English (or code-meshing effectively, though you should start code-meshing in the drafting and revision process).

While you might begin editing as your write and revise your paper, many writers edit after they have a completely fleshed-out and revised draft of their paper since it is not as integral to the meaning-making process.

Resources

Obviously, both your peers and I will be your biggest resources for revision this semester. Our feedback should guide you as you think about developing meaning in your draft; did your peer bring up a point that you had not thought about that changed how you thought about a topic? Did I have questions about your paper that made you realize that some of your ideas were unclear or not yet well-developed?

On the University Writing Center's Resources Page, you will find some useful revision resources under the "Planning and organizing," "Academic writing," and "Style" headings, while useful editing resources available under the the "Grammar and Punctuation" and the "Style" headings.

Additionally, you could also make an appointment with the Writing Center to help you revise and edit your paper!