“How to write an essay” and “how to edit an essay” are frequent requests from students. In our blog, you can find a lot of information on how to complete different types of essays, including argumentative, expository, definition, and application essays. But this article is devoted to essay editing, which is also a very important topic.
A lot of students pay more attention to researching and writing itself, and they leave too little time for editing. We are sure you will agree that it’s a pity to get low scores after days of intensive research just because of grammatical mistakes. Now, to fulfill your request, “how to edit my essay?” we are going to answer questions that concern many students on the specified issue.
Essay Editing Q&A
Q: How much time will I need to edit?
A: It depends on the length of the paper. If your paper is less than five pages, you will probably need an hour to edit it. If papers are with the length from 5 to 10 pages, you should edit them for two to two and a half hours. These estimations are suggested for final editing. You should take into consideration that your work will be more effective if you edit your paper two times with a time gap between them. It would be better if the second editing takes place a day or at least a couple of hours after the first one.
Q: When should I move to essay editing?
A: After finishing the first draft, you should edit it. Take into account that you should wait for a couple of hours after writing before moving to this process. When you read a text dozens of times, you become blind to some mistakes that you could notice with a fresh eye. Therefore, give yourself time to cool down before the first editing phase. We recommend that you do this at least a day before the deadline, or several hours before if you need to submit a short paper.
Q: What mistakes should I correct first?
A: First of all you need to edit inaccuracies if they take place. If your essay contains a lot of actual data, check if your data is up-to-date and accurate. When you work on an essay for a couple of weeks, you can find that information is out-of-date right before the deadline. If you don’t want to experience such a surprise, check all information that gives you doubts about its up-to-dateness. Pay proper attention to statistical data because it changes quite often. Also, you should check names of scientists, their organizations, cities, and countries. Bet you didn’t want to feel ashamed because of your inadvertency.
Q: Can I edit my essay in ten minutes?
A: If you are a person with higher linguistic education, you will probably be able to cope with editing in ten minutes. If it is not so, we insist that you take more time for editing your paper.
Q: How can I find inconsistencies?
A: Make sure that you follow one format style through the entire essay. If you have subheadings, check if all of them are written in one style. For example, if each word in the first subheading starts with upper-case, you shouldn’t change this in further subheadings. Also, you need to pay attention to lists. Make sure that each bullet point from the list is written in the same sentence type (declarative, imperative, interrogative, exclamatory). After checking subheadings and bullet points, examine your text thoroughly and make sure that all information is organized in a logical order.
Q: How can I edit my essay if I don’t know all the rules?
A: This question is very logical. We have prepared several ways on how you can edit mistakes if you just don’t know that they are mistakes. First of all, you should check your essay for orthographical mistakes. If you are writing an essay on your computer, you will see orthographical mistakes at once because almost all computer editors highlight spelling mistakes. However, if you use it, turn off the autocorrecting option. If it is on all the time, you will then find weird words instead of names, special terms, or abbreviations.
Also, you have the ability to ask someone to help you. If it is your classmate, ask him or her to check your work, and explain your mistakes. Until you hear the specific rule, don’t correct the mistake because you can’t be absolutely confident that your classmate is not mistaken. Actually, it would be better if you ask a qualified person to help you.
Q: How can I avoid making the same mistakes?
A: Typically, students tend to make the same mistakes for a long period of time. Analyze your previous assignments that were corrected by your teacher. Do you see any coincidences? Make a list with your typical mistakes and check your current assignment for mistakes from the list. Now, we are primarily speaking about orthographical and punctuation errors. Believe us, you will definitely need such a list while you are studying so don’t be laze to complete it! You will learn how to avoid some types of mistakes faster than others. Therefore, try to save this list and add new errors with the flow of time.
What Else Can We Do For You?
We hope this article was useful for you as well as other our articles. If you would like to know more about writing rather editing, you can read this article – How to Write a Short Essay in Three Hours. Or, you can contact writingcheap.com directly. The aim of our service is to help students meet their academic goals. You can ask us to help you no matter how difficult your task is. Due to our rigorous recruitment process, we offer you assistance from the best professional writers. Therefore, you will get highly qualified help if you use our service. Just fill the order form with all the requirements and choose the appropriate writer. For the rest of the work, you can rely on us! We are available 24/7!