Mindful Revision: Polishing Your Prose in Academic Writing

Image source: pexels

If you’re trying to improve your writing, it means you want to do it perfectly.

You probably know that just looking for spelling and grammar errors isn’t enough. There are many other things to think about when you’re revising, and this blog will cover them.

First, remember that revising your writing takes time. So, if you’re here for tricks to complete this step within seconds, it’s better to get help from the best academic writers UK has to offer on MyAssignmentHelp. These scholars might be able to help you with quick revisions because they have high-end tools at their disposal.

Unfortunately, even premium proofreading tools can’t help you figure out if one of your facts is inaccurate or if you’ve missed demonstrating a point. So, unless you’re planning to get assignment help from MyAssigmentHelp UK, you might want to take a closer look at the revision techniques mentioned below.

Helpful Revision Techniques for the Perfect Paper

When you’re about to revise your academic paper, you can’t afford to switch off your brain and go through your work mindlessly. You have to be mentally present during the revision process as well. Because, as stated earlier, it’s not only about checking a few minor errors. There’s much to be done with very little time at hand. So, let’s not waste any more time and get right into it.

1. Proofread your assignment backwards

One of the most common proofreading advice is to take a break between writing and checking the content. The intention behind this is good. After all, if you start revising immediately after writing your paper, there’s a high chance you won’t notice half the mistakes in your work. 

But who has the time to take a day, or even a few hour’s break, before proofreading? You’ll always be struggling to meet deadlines in college. 

So, if you want to avoid taking a break after writing, try proofreading backwards. Start from the last sentence and then make your way forward. Even if you have just completed writing the paper yourself, it’ll seem new to you because you’re going backwards. Using this technique, try to keep an eye out for the following – 

• Out-of-context use of a word
• Sentences with incomplete meaning
• Spelling and grammatical mistakes

Professional editors always use this hack to revise their client’s works when under tight deadlines. This technique might seem like a farce – but you’ll understand its effectiveness only when you try it out yourself.  

2. Check the authenticity of your facts

If you’re trying to prove a particular point, the best way to get readers on your side is to provide data. However, this data has to come from reliable sources. Let’s take a quick example to help you understand why this is important.

Suppose you want to find out whether parents helping their children with homework is beneficial or not. There might be two cases here:

Case I – You find a research article in an academic that has conducted a study on 2000 families and found out that students who received help from their parents had better performance in the long run.

Case II – You find a random blog online where the author states that students who get help from parents perform poorly. They do not back up their declaration using statistical data.

Naturally, the conclusion reached in Case I will have more validity than Case II because it is from a reliable source and backed by research data. So, when revising your content, check the authoritativeness of each source that you’ve used.

3. Verify the spelling of all authors’ names 

Proper nouns can be a hassle to deal with because there is always the chance you might have misspelled a name. It’s easy to confuse a Michael with a Micheal and a Jon with a John. So, don’t just assume that you know the spelling of an author’s name just because it sounds familiar. Always double-check from the source. Or, if that’s going to be too time-consuming, just Google it! 

Making a mistake while mentioning the name of an author calls into question your credibility. It’ll make the readers doubt whether you’ve even conducted your research properly. So, let’s avoid all that mess and just double-check all proper nouns before submitting your academic paper. 

4. Use synonyms for overly-repeated words

When you revise your content, you might notice that you’ve repeated a word several times in a sentence. Let’s take an example:

“According to the report, the students struggled because of poor concentration. The report also claims that these students barely attended classes.”

Instead of using “students” and “report” back to back, you can also write the sentences as such – 

“The report states that the students struggled because of poor concentration, while additional data also claims that they barely attended classes.”

If you keep repeating a word multiple times throughout your writing, the readability will decrease. Now, it’s not always possible to keep track of specific words that you use when you’re racing against a ticking clock. At least you can make the necessary changes during the revision stage.

5. Identify and eliminate fluff

You do not have the luxury to go off on a tangent and write about things unrelated to the topic in your academic paper. This is considered fluff. Now, some students do this intentionally because they run out of things to write about. But that’s not the solution. While revising your content, always ask yourself, “Is this relevant?” or “How does this connect with the main topic?” 

The moment you notice that some sections in your paper aren’t adding anything of value to the content, remove them. If you can’t meet the required word count because of that, find something else to add. But this time, make sure that it is relevant. You can search for more examples or expand upon an existing point.

6. Keep an eye out for common writing mistakes 

Some of the most common writing mistakes include the following – 

• Mistakenly using single quotes instead of double quotes when using direct speech
• Sentence with missing verb, unnecessary capitalisation, or excessive commas
• Usage of pronouns without specifying a subject beforehand

Writing mistakes such as these are a result of a lack of proofreading. No matter how many times you run your paper through a proofreading tool, it won’t be able to detect issues like incorrect use of words or mistakes in pronoun usage. It’s up to you to be mindful of these common mistakes while revising.

In summary,

When you revise any academic paper, always remember to check for the most recurring issues that might occur. Spelling and grammatical issues aside, you might also have problems with run-on sentences, incomplete ideas, and formatting issues. Just make sure to apply the right revision techniques so that you can polish your paper to perfection.