Tips for self-editing
Presented by
STUDENT LEARNING SUPPORT
English · Academic Skills · Maths
Level 4 HSS · learningsupport@bond.edu.au
You have to edit for:
•What your Lecturer/Tutor wants
–(the marking/assessment criteria)
•Improvement
•Correction
Marking Criteria
What is expected with:
•Length
•Style
•Format / layout
•Formality
•Referencing
•US v British English
•Tone – persuasive/objective
Improvement
Improvement – overall structure
• Do you have a clear detailed thesis statement?
• Do you need to define your topic?
• Do you have topic sentences at the beginning of every paragraph?
• Does your conclusion only contain points you’ve already discussed?
• Do your ideas flow logically?
• Are your points backed up?
Improvement
Improvement – back up points
• Are your points backed up/logical?
• Shortsightedness has been found to be a result of not looking at long distance vistas. Therefore, more Asians need glasses than western races.
Improvement
Improvement
•Sentence structure
•Vocabulary
•Large groups of nouns
•Verbs not used as nouns
•Clauses
•Passives
•Negatives
Improvement
Sentence structure
•Do they often start the same way?
•Do you use a lot of unnecessary clauses?
•Are there a lot of long sentences?
•Too many rhetorical questions?
Improvement
Sentence start
To make your sentence more interesting:
•Start with a participle. E.g. Having never before had so much freedom, the slaves didn’t know what to do with themselves.
•Start with an adverb. E.g. Silently, the gas continued to creep across the land.
•Start with an adverbial clause. E.g. Loudly claiming his innocence, the convicted man went to meet his maker.
•Start with an infinitive. E.g. To make amends for the mistake, the government offered the Smith family compensation.
•Start with a dependent clause, instead of having it follow on from the independent clause. E.g. Although the plague was a huge problem during that period, it had not yet reached critical proportions.
•Start with an appositive, or use one after the subject. E.g. Natives of North America, the Iroquois first used the word Kanata, meaning village, which was later to become the name for the whole country of Canada.
Improvement
Sentence parallelism
•I like swimming, cycling and to play cricket.
•He is friendly, kind, unobtrusive and a bore.
•He failed in the house of commons; he moved to a small local government job; he died relatively unknown.
Improvement
Sentence length
•Mix long and short sentences together
•All short sentences can be jerky and monotonous, while a mixture of the two can give the short sentences more power.
•All long sentences is difficult to read