The word polish originally meant to make something smooth and shiny, as in “she polished her leather shoes.” In writing, polish can mean to improve or perfect, or refine a piece of writing by getting rid of minor errors. We often hear professors or instructors say that you need to “ polish your writing.” What do you mean by polish? This is a lot like polishing your writing. In other words, editing means that you take care of minor errors in your writing. You may want to read our resource on basic rhetorical elements to help guide your revision.Įditing typically means that you go over your writing to make sure that you do not have any grammatical errors or strange phrases that make it difficult for your readers to understand what you are trying to say. In a word, revising means that you organize your writing better in a way that your audience can understand your writing better. You may add more paragraphs or remove paragraphs to better fit into a given genre or topic. Revision lets you look at your paper in terms of your topic, your ideas, and your audience. What is the difference between revise and edit? For more information on drafting and revising your work, watch our Drafting and Revising video. That means, you shouldn't be missing any of the major parts of the paper. When you are required to submit a rough draft, it doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be complete. In the rough draft, readers want to see if you have a clear direction in your paper. This usually means that your work is still in progress. Your professors or instructors will often require you to submit a rough draft of your paper. Once you have the skeleton in place, you can start thinking about how to add additional detail to it. Many writers call this a skeleton unto which you develop or “flesh out” the paper. The specific structure of each essay may vary from assignment to assignment. You will usually outline your paper by beginning with its three major parts: introduction, body, and conclusion. This means that you will think about the structure of your paper so that you can best deliver your ideas, and meet the requirements of writing assignments. Next, you may want to outline your paper based on the ideas you came up with while you were brainstorming. Think of this like the erratic thunder and lightning that comes from a thunderstorm. You can brainstorm by creating a list of ideas that you came up with, or drawing a map and diagram, or just writing down whatever you can think of without thinking about grammar. Don't worry about whether or not they are good or bad ideas. When you brainstorm for ideas, you will try to come up with as many ideas as you can. Brainstormingīefore you start writing, you will think about what to write, or how to write. Writers may then edit their rough draft by changing words and sentences that are grammatically incorrect or inappropriate for a topic. After they make a rough draft, writers may begin revising their work by adding more sentences, or removing sentences. Usually, writers start with choosing topics and brainstorming, and then they may outline their papers, and compose sentences and paragraphs to make a rough draft. All writers go through their own unique writing processes before they make their final drafts. Writing can’t be done without going through certain stages. It covers concepts and and key words pertaining to the stages in the writing process, style, citation and reference, and other common expressions in academic writing Stages of the Writing Process This resource provides a list of key concepts, words, and phrases that multi-lingual writers may find useful if they are new to writing in the North American educational context. Writing Letters of Recommendation for Students.Skip a line between each source and indent every line but the first. Then rewrite each of your source cards in alphabetical order. If you are using APA format, then write References in the middle of the page. If you are using MLA format, then write Works Cited in the middle of the page. Restate your main points, restate your thesis, and state closing thoughts.
After the last note card, write a conclusion paragraph. It is best to have one to two note cards used as evidence in each body paragraph. Note: Repeat the above steps for every note card. (Explain how the information supports your argument.): Say something else about note card 1b, in your own words. Say something else about note card 1a, in your own words (Explain how the information supports your argument.):ġb. Rewrite note card information below (include in-text citation): Topic sentence (Write the topic of this paragraph).ġa. Thesis Statement (Summarize the argument of your paper in 1 sentence):