Drafting and editing

Sitting down to write an entire essay, lab report, literature review or presentation in one session can be an overwhelming task, especially if you try and make it perfect first time. It can be helpful to break your writing assignment down into sections, draft each section and then edit your work afterwards.

When you write your first draft, your goal is to get writing. At this stage, your writing is not meant to be perfect; it will be full of mistakes and structural issues. The idea is to get as much of your project written, so you can fix the issues later.

Editing is a critical part of the writing process. The purpose is to re-read your work and correct mistakes, revise the structure if needed to improve clarity, and improve word choice.

Editing is a useful process because as you write a piece of work you may find your ideas or understanding changes. By reviewing and re-writing parts of your work you can adjust your writing to modify existing ideas.

The editing process also allows you to incorporate more regular proof-reading into your writing process; rather than leaving it all to the end. You will learn about proof-reading in the next step.

Things to look for when editing your work

• Unnecessary words: Avoid filler phrases. It is better to be concise than to have a long piece of writing with excessive description.
• Clarity: Ask yourself: could someone who doesn’t know much about the topic understand your writing?
• Long sentences: Even grammatically correct sentences can be confusing when they are too long. Look for long sentences and see if you can break these down into two shorter sentences. Large paragraphs that are only one or two sentences long are not recommended.
• Sentence openings: When writing about a particular scientific topic or concept, you can easily fall into the trap of starting every sentence with that topic as the subject. This creates writing that is boring and hard to follow. Try to switch up the way you start your sentences/paragraphs.

References:

Ellis, Matt. “5 Self-Editing Tips to Strengthen Your Writing.’ Grammarly, 18 June 2021, https://www.grammarly.com/blog/self-editing-tips/

Kramer, Lindsay. “The Writing Process: 6 Steps Every Writer Should Know.” Grammarly, 2 March 2023 https://www.grammarly.com/blog/writing-process/