essay in editing

Editing and Proofreading

What this handout is about.

This handout provides some tips and strategies for revising your writing. To give you a chance to practice proofreading, we have left seven errors (three spelling errors, two punctuation errors, and two grammatical errors) in the text of this handout. See if you can spot them!

Is editing the same thing as proofreading?

Not exactly. Although many people use the terms interchangeably, editing and proofreading are two different stages of the revision process. Both demand close and careful reading, but they focus on different aspects of the writing and employ different techniques.

Some tips that apply to both editing and proofreading

• Get some distance from the text! It’s hard to edit or proofread a paper that you’ve just finished writing—it’s still to familiar, and you tend to skip over a lot of errors. Put the paper aside for a few hours, days, or weeks. Go for a run. Take a trip to the beach. Clear your head of what you’ve written so you can take a fresh look at the paper and see what is really on the page. Better yet, give the paper to a friend—you can’t get much more distance than that. Someone who is reading the paper for the first time, comes to it with completely fresh eyes.
• Decide which medium lets you proofread most carefully. Some people like to work right at the computer, while others like to sit back with a printed copy that they can mark up as they read.
• Try changing the look of your document. Altering the size, spacing, color, or style of the text may trick your brain into thinking it’s seeing an unfamiliar document, and that can help you get a different perspective on what you’ve written.
• Find a quiet place to work. Don’t try to do your proofreading in front of the TV or while you’re chugging away on the treadmill. Find a place where you can concentrate and avoid distractions.
• If possible, do your editing and proofreading in several short blocks of time. Your concentration may start to wane if you try to proofread the entire text at one time.
• If you’re short on time, you may wish to prioritize. Make sure that you complete the most important editing and proofreading tasks.

Editing is what you begin doing as soon as you finish your first draft. You reread your draft to see, for example, whether the paper is well-organized, the transitions between paragraphs are smooth, and your evidence really backs up your argument. You can edit on several levels:

Have you done everything the assignment requires? Are the claims you make accurate? If it is required to do so, does your paper make an argument? Is the argument complete? Are all of your claims consistent? Have you supported each point with adequate evidence? Is all of the information in your paper relevant to the assignment and/or your overall writing goal? (For additional tips, see our handouts on understanding assignments and developing an argument .)

Overall structure

Does your paper have an appropriate introduction and conclusion? Is your thesis clearly stated in your introduction? Is it clear how each paragraph in the body of your paper is related to your thesis? Are the paragraphs arranged in a logical sequence? Have you made clear transitions between paragraphs? One way to check the structure of your paper is to make a reverse outline of the paper after you have written the first draft. (See our handouts on introductions , conclusions , thesis statements , and transitions .)

Structure within paragraphs

Does each paragraph have a clear topic sentence? Does each paragraph stick to one main idea? Are there any extraneous or missing sentences in any of your paragraphs? (See our handout on paragraph development .)

Have you defined any important terms that might be unclear to your reader? Is the meaning of each sentence clear? (One way to answer this question is to read your paper one sentence at a time, starting at the end and working backwards so that you will not unconsciously fill in content from previous sentences.) Is it clear what each pronoun (he, she, it, they, which, who, this, etc.) refers to? Have you chosen the proper words to express your ideas? Avoid using words you find in the thesaurus that aren’t part of your normal vocabulary; you may misuse them.

Have you used an appropriate tone (formal, informal, persuasive, etc.)? Is your use of gendered language (masculine and feminine pronouns like “he” or “she,” words like “fireman” that contain “man,” and words that some people incorrectly assume apply to only one gender—for example, some people assume “nurse” must refer to a woman) appropriate? Have you varied the length and structure of your sentences? Do you tends to use the passive voice too often? Does your writing contain a lot of unnecessary phrases like “there is,” “there are,” “due to the fact that,” etc.? Do you repeat a strong word (for example, a vivid main verb) unnecessarily? (For tips, see our handouts on style and gender-inclusive language .)

Have you appropriately cited quotes, paraphrases, and ideas you got from sources? Are your citations in the correct format? (See the UNC Libraries citation tutorial for more information.)

As you edit at all of these levels, you will usually make significant revisions to the content and wording of your paper. Keep an eye out for patterns of error; knowing what kinds of problems you tend to have will be helpful, especially if you are editing a large document like a thesis or dissertation. Once you have identified a pattern, you can develop techniques for spotting and correcting future instances of that pattern. For example, if you notice that you often discuss several distinct topics in each paragraph, you can go through your paper and underline the key words in each paragraph, then break the paragraphs up so that each one focuses on just one main idea.

Proofreading

Proofreading is the final stage of the editing process, focusing on surface errors such as misspellings and mistakes in grammar and punctuation. You should proofread only after you have finished all of your other editing revisions.

Why proofread? It’s the content that really matters, right?

Content is important. But like it or not, the way a paper looks affects the way others judge it. When you’ve worked hard to develop and present your ideas, you don’t want careless errors distracting your reader from what you have to say. It’s worth paying attention to the details that help you to make a good impression.

Most people devote only a few minutes to proofreading, hoping to catch any glaring errors that jump out from the page. But a quick and cursory reading, especially after you’ve been working long and hard on a paper, usually misses a lot. It’s better to work with a definite plan that helps you to search systematically for specific kinds of errors.

Sure, this takes a little extra time, but it pays off in the end. If you know that you have an effective way to catch errors when the paper is almost finished, you can worry less about editing while you are writing your first drafts. This makes the entire writing proccess more efficient.

Try to keep the editing and proofreading processes separate. When you are editing an early draft, you don’t want to be bothered with thinking about punctuation, grammar, and spelling. If your worrying about the spelling of a word or the placement of a comma, you’re not focusing on the more important task of developing and connecting ideas.

The proofreading process

You probably already use some of the strategies discussed below. Experiment with different tactics until you find a system that works well for you. The important thing is to make the process systematic and focused so that you catch as many errors as possible in the least amount of time.

• Don’t rely entirely on spelling checkers. These can be useful tools but they are far from foolproof. Spell checkers have a limited dictionary, so some words that show up as misspelled may really just not be in their memory. In addition, spell checkers will not catch misspellings that form another valid word. For example, if you type “your” instead of “you’re,” “to” instead of “too,” or “there” instead of “their,” the spell checker won’t catch the error.
• Grammar checkers can be even more problematic. These programs work with a limited number of rules, so they can’t identify every error and often make mistakes. They also fail to give thorough explanations to help you understand why a sentence should be revised. You may want to use a grammar checker to help you identify potential run-on sentences or too-frequent use of the passive voice, but you need to be able to evaluate the feedback it provides.
• Proofread for only one kind of error at a time. If you try to identify and revise too many things at once, you risk losing focus, and your proofreading will be less effective. It’s easier to catch grammar errors if you aren’t checking punctuation and spelling at the same time. In addition, some of the techniques that work well for spotting one kind of mistake won’t catch others.
• Read slow, and read every word. Try reading out loud , which forces you to say each word and also lets you hear how the words sound together. When you read silently or too quickly, you may skip over errors or make unconscious corrections.
• Separate the text into individual sentences. This is another technique to help you to read every sentence carefully. Simply press the return key after every period so that every line begins a new sentence. Then read each sentence separately, looking for grammar, punctuation, or spelling errors. If you’re working with a printed copy, try using an opaque object like a ruler or a piece of paper to isolate the line you’re working on.
• Circle every punctuation mark. This forces you to look at each one. As you circle, ask yourself if the punctuation is correct.
• Read the paper backwards. This technique is helpful for checking spelling. Start with the last word on the last page and work your way back to the beginning, reading each word separately. Because content, punctuation, and grammar won’t make any sense, your focus will be entirely on the spelling of each word. You can also read backwards sentence by sentence to check grammar; this will help you avoid becoming distracted by content issues.
• Proofreading is a learning process. You’re not just looking for errors that you recognize; you’re also learning to recognize and correct new errors. This is where handbooks and dictionaries come in. Keep the ones you find helpful close at hand as you proofread.
• Ignorance may be bliss, but it won’t make you a better proofreader. You’ll often find things that don’t seem quite right to you, but you may not be quite sure what’s wrong either. A word looks like it might be misspelled, but the spell checker didn’t catch it. You think you need a comma between two words, but you’re not sure why. Should you use “that” instead of “which”? If you’re not sure about something, look it up.
• The proofreading process becomes more efficient as you develop and practice a systematic strategy. You’ll learn to identify the specific areas of your own writing that need careful attention, and knowing that you have a sound method for finding errors will help you to focus more on developing your ideas while you are drafting the paper.

Think you’ve got it?

Then give it a try, if you haven’t already! This handout contains seven errors our proofreader should have caught: three spelling errors, two punctuation errors, and two grammatical errors. Try to find them, and then check a version of this page with the errors marked in red to see if you’re a proofreading star.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Especially for non-native speakers of English:

Ascher, Allen. 2006. Think About Editing: An ESL Guide for the Harbrace Handbooks . Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Lane, Janet, and Ellen Lange. 2012. Writing Clearly: Grammar for Editing , 3rd ed. Boston: Heinle.

For everyone:

Einsohn, Amy. 2011. The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications , 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lanham, Richard A. 2006. Revising Prose , 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Tarshis, Barry. 1998. How to Be Your Own Best Editor: The Toolkit for Everyone Who Writes . New York: Three Rivers Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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• 13 Essential Editing Tips to Use in Your Essay Writing

The good student strives constantly to achieve a better essay each time they write one.

It can be a challenge to find ways to keep improving, but one way of making your essays instantly better is effective editing. Editing your essay before you submit it could mean the difference between a good grade and a brilliant one, so it’s worth taking fifteen minutes or so before you send it off just checking through it to make sure that the structure and wording is as good as it can be. In this article, we give you some tips to think about when you’re editing your own writing. Keep these tips alongside you to use as a checklist and you can’t go far wrong!

1. Start by getting the structure right

If you have time, try to leave a bit of time between finishing your essay and starting the editing process. This gives you time to approach it feeling reasonably fresh; if you edit immediately after spending a long time on something, you might find that you’re so close to it that you’re unable to spot errors. When you do sit down to look through it, start by looking at its structure. Think about the overarching shape of the argument you’re developing and check that the points you’ve made help build your essay towards a logical conclusion. You may have written an essay with the points in order of when they occurred to you, but is this really the most sensible order? Does one point follow logically on from the other? Would it make the essay more interesting to include a certain point near the beginning to tease the reader, or are you revealing too much in the opening, meaning it would be better to move some points nearer the end? These are just a few of the ways in which it might be possible to improve the structure, so it helps to keep in mind your overall argument and ensure your structure puts it across as effectively as possible. With word processors now the primary means of writing essays, it couldn’t be easier to rearrange paragraphs into a more logical structure by dragging and dropping or cutting and pasting paragraphs. If you do this, don’t forget to reread the essay to ensure that the wording works with this new order, otherwise you may end up with a sentence leading into the wrong paragraph.

2. Prune long sentences and paragraphs

Whether you’ve exceeded your word count or not, long sentences and paragraphs should be edited because they can be trickier to read, and risk being boring or hard to follow. Try, therefore, to keep sentences to a maximum of two or three clauses (or segments). Avoid long paragraphs by starting a new one if you find one getting longer than three or four sentences: a wall of text can be off-putting to the reader. Leave a space between paragraphs if you’re typing your essay, as we’re doing in this article. Another way of keeping sentences to a reasonable length is to go through what you’ve written and tighten up the wording. If you find yourself writing long sentences, try to look for ways in which you can reword them to express what you’re trying to say more concisely. You’ll probably find numerous instances of phrases that take many words to say what could be said in two or three.

3. Keep overly complicated language in check

It’s going to look obvious if you’ve had a thesaurus next to you while writing, just so that you can replace all the simple words with more complicated ones. The thing is, it doesn’t always make you look intelligent; you may, for instance, inadvertently choose the wrong synonym, not realising that even close synonyms can have subtly different meanings or connotations. Sometimes using big words where simple ones would suffice can seem contrived and pompous; aim for clear, concise language to avoid being verbose or pretentious. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use more complex words at all – just choose the situation carefully and don’t overdo it.

4. Watch for repetition of ideas and words

It’s easy to repeat yourself without realising it when you’re writing, but the editing process is there to enable you to spot this before your teacher or lecturer sees it. As you read through your essay, keep a look out for ideas you’ve repeated and delete whichever repetitions add nothing to your essay (don’t forget that the first instance of the idea may not be the most appropriate place for it, so consider which is the best moment to introduce it and delete the other mentions). On a related note, look out for instances in which you’ve laboured the point. Going on about a particular point for too long can actually undermine the strength of your argument, because it makes you look as though you’re desperately grappling to find supporting facts; sometimes a simple, clear statement with a brief piece of evidence to back it up is all that’s needed. You should be equally wary of repetition of words within the same sentence or paragraph. It’s fine to repeat common words such as “the”, obviously, but it’s best to avoid using the same connecting words, such as “also”, more than once in the same paragraph. Rephrase using alternative expressions, such as “what’s more”. More unusual words should be used just once per paragraph – words such as “unavoidable”, for example – unless it’s for emphasis.

5. Don’t rely on the spellcheck

It’s a tip we’ve told you before, but it’s worth repeating because it’s very important! The spellcheck will not pick up every single error in your essay. It may highlight some typos and misspellings, but it won’t tell you if you’ve inadvertently used the wrong word altogether. For example, you may have meant to write the word “from”, but accidentally mistyped it as “form” – which is still a word, so the spellchecker won’t register it. But it’s not the word you meant to write.

6. Spotting typos

It’s said that if you read through your work backwards, you’re more likely to spot typos. This is probably because it’s giving you a new perspective on what you’ve written, making it easier to spot glaring errors than if you read through it in the order in which you wrote it and in which you know what to expect. So, start with the last sentence and keep going in reverse order until you get to the beginning of your essay. Another tip is to print out your essay and take a red pen to it, circling or underlining all the errors and then correcting them on the computer later. It’s often easier to read a document from a printed version, and it also means that you can follow what you’re doing by touching each word with the end of your pencil to make sure you’re not skimming over any errors.

7. Omit unnecessary words and eradicate weasel words

Without even realising it, you’ve probably used plenty of unnecessary words in your writing – words that add to the word count without adding to the meaning – and you’ll find that your writing works just as well without them. An example is the word “very”, which almost always adds nothing to what you’re trying to say. As Mark Twain said, “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be”. Weasel words are worse, as they are used to hide weak or objectionable arguments. A study of Wikipedia found that these tend to fall into three different categories: numerical vagueness (such as “many people say” without specifying who these people are), the use of the passive voice to distance the writer from what they’re saying (“it is often said”, for example, without saying by whom it is often said), and the use of adverbs designed to soften a point (such as “probably”). Look out for these in your own writing and rephrase to remove them; they are disingenuous and your essay will be stronger without them.

8. Remove tautologies

A tautology is a stylistic error involving redundant words, in this case the use of two consecutive words that mean the same thing, such as “the big giant” (referring simply to a “giant” would have been sufficient to convey the meaning). Students often use them when they’re trying to make their writing wordier, not realising that they simply make their writing worse.

9. Watch the commas

People tend either to put too many commas into a sentence, or too few. Too many, and the sentence sounds broken and odd; too few, and the reader has to read the sentence several times to figure out what you’re trying to say, because it comes out in a long, jumbled mess. The secret is to put commas in where you would naturally pause when speaking aloud. If it helps, try reading your writing aloud to see if it flows. Where you would pause for slightly longer, a semi-colon might be more appropriate than a comma. Use a semi-colon to connect two independent clauses that would work as two separate sentences.

10. Consistent spelling

Some words have more than one correct spelling, and the important thing is to be consistent with which one you use. You could, if you wanted to make your life a little easier, delve into the settings on your word processor and manipulate the spellcheck so that it highlights the version you decided against – or even autocorrects to the right version. If you’re writing in the UK, ensure that your word processor’s default language is set to UK English so that you don’t end up inadvertently correcting English spellings to US ones (“colour” to “color”, for example).

11. Get rid of exclamation marks and ellipses

In virtually every case, you don’t need to use an exclamation mark, and – at least in academic writing – your use of one may result in your writing not being taken quite so seriously. Only use them in exceptional circumstances when you really want to convey a feeling of surprise or outrage. Ellipses (“…”) should also be avoided except when you’re indicating the truncation of a quote from another writer (that is, where you left a bit out).

12. Attribute quotations

Quotations from authors or academic writers should be attributed to them. As you read through your essay, keep a look out for any quotations you’ve mentioned and make sure that you say where they’re from. If you’re writing an essay for university, a footnote would be an appropriate way of citing another writer. If you are using footnotes, this gives an extra area on which to focus your editing skills; ensure that all footnotes are consistently formatted, and don’t forget to put a bibliography containing all the books you’ve used at the end.

13. Consistent formatting

The appearance of your essay matters, too – and the formatting should not be neglected when you’re in editing mode. This means being consistent with your use of fonts, using italics or underline for emphasis rather than using them interchangeably, ensuring that the spacing between lines is consistent throughout, and other such minor aesthetic points. This may not sound very important, but consistent formatting helps your essay look professional; if you’ve used different fonts or line spacing or anything like that, your essay will look a mess even if what you’ve said in it is good. You could make use of the pre-populated formatting options in your word processor to ensure consistency throughout, with header 1 for the title, header 2 for subheadings and ‘normal text’ for the body of the document. If you find that there are too many things on this list to think about in one go when you’re reading through your essay, you could read through it several times looking out for different things each time. All this may seem a lot to think about when you’ve already put in so much effort to write the essay in the first place, but trust us: it will pay off with a sleek and polished piece.

29 Proofreading Marks and Symbols—The Key to Error-Free Writing

| Candace Osmond

Candace Osmond

Candace Osmond studied Advanced Writing & Editing Essentials at MHC. She’s been an International and USA TODAY Bestselling Author for over a decade. And she’s worked as an Editor for several mid-sized publications. Candace has a keen eye for content editing and a high degree of expertise in Fiction.

Proofreading marks and symbols, also known as editing marks, are the strange red pen scratches that an editor or proofreader applies to a written piece of work to let the writer know what needs to be fixed. From missing periods to misplaced commas, paragraph breaks, and parts to omit, these marks act like a secret code between the editor and writer.

If you’re a writer looking to work with a professional editor or proofreader or to start offering these services to writers, you need to understand what these symbols mean.

When I initially started collaborating with an editor and using a proofreading service, I had no idea what any of the symbols were when I got my draft back full of weird marks. It took a while to learn them all, and now I’m putting them together with a breakdown of each.

My guide lists each proofreading mark and symbol and defines them with quick explanations and a handy image as a visual reminder. I’ll even include some tips on how to use proofreading symbols.

Ready to master the 29 most common proofreading marks and symbols? Let’s get started!

What Are Common Proofreading Marks and Symbols?

Are you ready? Like, really ready? This list is long but includes every main proofreading mark and symbol you might need to know.

The delete symbol is commonly used in proofreading to indicate the removal of a word or letter. It helps identify over-repeated words, unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, and overused terms within the text.

The caret symbol indicates where a word or element should be added to the text. It suggests inserting a word or element to improve the sentence’s clarity or completeness.

Proofreaders use this symbol to indicate the correction of unequally wide or double spaces in writing. Remove or close the extra space between words if you see this symbol.

New Paragraph

This symbol signals the need to start a new paragraph. It’s commonly used in dialogue exchanges in stories or when the writer introduces a new idea in their essay.

The number or pound sign indicates that you should add space between the two words. It’s commonly used to correct missing spaces, especially in compound words.

It is used to indicate that two characters, words, or sections should be swapped in position.

Use this proofreading symbol if a word should start with a capital letter instead of lowercase letters. You can also use the sign for multiple capital letters in the word.

This symbol indicates that a word should start with a lowercase letter instead of a capital one.

This mark signals that a word should be styled in italics.

This mark indicates that a specific word should be formatted in bold typeface.

It’s a Latin term that means “let it stand.” Proofreaders use stet to warn the writer to disregard a previous correction or deletion.

This mark indicates that the beginning of a paragraph should be indented. One square represents a one-space indent, while two squares side by side indicate a two-space indent.

Align Horizontally

This proofreading symbol is used to let the author know that the text is not horizontally aligned and may need adjustment to ensure proper alignment.

Align Vertically

This symbol indicates that the text within those lines should be adjusted or aligned vertically with nearby text or elements on the page for better visual consistency and readability.

Center Text

It indicates that the text should be centered on the page. It is typically used for titles, headings, or any text that requires center alignment for aesthetic or formatting purposes.

This mark lets the writer know that numbers or abbreviations should be fully written in words, especially if they follow certain style guides.

Move Left/Right/Up/Down

• The move left symbol suggests that the text should be shifted to the left for proper alignment.
• The move right symbol indicates a need to shift the text to the right.
• The move up symbol signifies that the text should be moved upward.
• The move down symbol denotes a need to move the text downward.

Reduce Space

Editors and proofreaders use this to tell the writer that the spaces between words or letters should be reduced.

Delete and Close Up

This mark is used to indicate that a letter should be deleted and that no space should be left behind.

Insert a Hyphen

It is used to indicate that a hyphen should be added where one is missing between words or in compound modifiers.

Insert a Period

It indicates that a period should be added where one is missing at the end of a sentence.

Insert a Comma

It shows where a comma should be added to improve sentence clarity or grammatical correctness.

Insert Quotation Marks

This symbol is used to add missing quotation marks at the beginning and end of direct speech or quotations.

Insert Apostrophe

Editors use this one to show where an apostrophe is needed, like in contractions, or to indicate possession.

No Paragraph

It’s a symbol used when a new paragraph has been incorrectly placed, and the text should continue without a break.

Push to the Next Page/Line

Editors will use this mark when the text or paragraph should be moved to the beginning of the next line or page to improve layout or readability.

Pull to Previous Page/Line

This symbol suggests pulling text back to the end of the previous line or page for better formatting or coherence.

Circled Number

When you see numbers in circles, these indicate multiple instances of the same correction.

How to Use Proofreading Marks

Whether you’re old-school with pen and paper or tech-savvy on the latest digital platform (or a combo of both, like me!), mastering these symbols is your rite of passage into the editing community. Here are some basic tips to help you become more familiar with using them.

Guidelines for Applying Proofreading Marks on Physical Manuscripts

• Grab a pen: Red is best, but any color will do as long as it’s not black or blue. Tradition dictates red, but any color that screams “Look at me!” and is legible will do just fine.
• Be consistent: Choose your symbols and stick with them. Changing halfway through is like switching languages mid-conversation.
• Clarity is key: Your squiggles, lines, and loops should be unmistakable. If it looks like ancient hieroglyphs, you’re doing it wrong. These marks are meant to make the editing process easier and quicker, but if the editor scribbles too much, the writer won’t understand what they mean.
• Margin notes are a reliable friend: Sometimes, a symbol just won’t cut it. Feel free to jot down a note in the margin for extra clarity.
• Double-check your work: Once you’ve marked it all up, go back and ensure you got everything, or mark something you didn’t mean to.

Tips for Using Proofreading Symbols in Digital Editing

• The Track Changes feature is your bestie: Most word processors have it, and it’s a game-changer for digital editing. When turned on, Track Changes will literally track and mark everything you change.
• Comments gold: Unsure about something? Leave a comment in the document attached to the text in question. It’s like margin notes but without the risk of smudging.
• Highlight like it’s going out of style: Use different color choices to highlight text and show various types of edits or to prioritize changes.
• Shortcuts and macros save lives: It may not be as dramatic as that, but they definitely save time. Learn the shortcuts for common editing commands in your word processor so that you never have to stop and search.
• Embrace editing software: Tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid are designed to make digital editing a breeze. Find your match and learn its ins and outs. Psst! I highly recommend Grammarly.

Another option is to use a proofreading mark plugin. This allows editors to proofread on word processors without having to memorize every single one of these symbols.

To insert the plugin, open your browser and go to the Greg Maxey website. Select “Resources,” then click “Proofreader Marks Add-in.” You’ll find it at the end of the page.

Then, it will open a dialog box with some prompts you need to follow. Open MS Word and you will see a new “Proofreading Marks: section on the “Add-Ins” tab. Now, you can apply proofreading marks on your document like a professional proofreader.

When proofreading, you must drag the cursor over the text that needs a mark. Then, select the drop-down menu under the ribbon and choose the correct mark. Remember to save your changes.

Transitioning from Traditional to Digital Proofreading

Gone are the days when editing meant paper cuts, White-Out, and red ink-stained fingers. Welcome to the digital age, my friends, where proofreading has gone electronic! But don’t worry; the basics of proofreading remain the same, even if the tools have evolved.

Traditional marks now have their digital counterparts: strikeouts, insertions, comments, etc. Software and digital platforms have embraced these age-old practices, ensuring that even in a world of screens, the heart of editing beats on.

Everything You Need to Know about Proofreading Marks

I hope my guide on proofreading and editing symbols with examples will empower you to spot errors in writing more effectively. We covered a pretty comprehensive list, didn’t we? We even touched on a few tips for using proofreading marks and symbols and adapting to digital tools.

Keep practicing until you’re ready to start a proofreading career. And let us know if you have questions about proofreading mark making. We always have a ton of helpful advice and tips right on our site, so don’t be shy!

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How to Edit an Essay: Tips and Tricks for a Flawless Paper

How to Edit a Paper: 9 Tips You Need to Know

Often overlooked as an easy task, essay editing is way more important step of the writing process than you can imagine. Writing a compelling introduction, crafting comprehensive body paragraphs, knowing what words to use in college essays, and finishing it off with a memorable conclusion are essential, but revising what you wrote can take your essay to a whole new level. 

Professional writers know that revising a text is an art of its own, and if you want to play in the top league, you should master it too. Our research paper writing service sets a goal to share the intricate details of how to edit a paper and help you become a skillful storyteller. 

Besides the obvious, like correcting grammar, spelling, syntax, and so on, editing allows you to see the full picture and make sure that your paper meets the initial goals. The true essence of editing lies in scrutinizing whether your paper is well-crafted and logically coherent while meeting the academic guidelines and thesis statement. Additionally, it demands you assess if you have adequately addressed all specific requirements and whether you have used proper essay language. 

Revisiting your written piece can enable you to refine areas that may lack consistency or clarity, thereby enabling you to tell an engaging story in a more professional manner. By adopting this approach, any informational gaps or inconsistencies could be swiftly addressed, giving readers a comprehensive account for them to enjoy reading.

Essay Editing Tip #1: Take a Break!

No matter how many essays you have written and where you stand on a scale of professional writers, you must still be wondering how to make an essay better. 

Believe it or not, taking a break and stepping back might be the best thing to do. Once you are done telling the story and have all the necessary aspects of a great essay, it's time to relax. Don't start paper editing, and by no means submit an essay straight away. 

Sometimes when our brains get stuck on one thing, we lose the ability to see things clearly. We get emotionally attached and can't see the obvious mistakes. Clear your head, watch a movie, take a walk, or do whatever makes you happy and feel at peace. Don't start writing the night before; give yourself a few hours or even days to distance yourself from the writing process. 

Once you feel all fresh, come back and start revising. You will notice mistakes that were there all this time, but you were unable to notice them. You will see logical inconsistencies and grammatical errors. Trust us, once you realize those grammatical errors could ruin your fascinating story, you'll be happy you did not submit the essay straight away. 

Essay Editing Tip #2: Change the Font and Size

Do you want to know what the next hack for editing an essay is? You should do everything to make it visually look like a different essay. Professional writers recommend changing the font and size. 

Remember when we talked about being unable to see the mistakes in front of our eyes? When you stare at an object for a while, it starts to lose its shape and other characteristics and kinda blends into a homogenous thing. You need to step away or look at it from a different angle to start seeing them again.

Yes, a paper is not a painting or an object, and you use words for essays, but you are still visually perceiving it. On average, writing a paper takes at least a day. Imagine starting at something and thinking about it for a day. It would turn into a borderless mixture in your head.

Changing the font and size is like changing the angle. You will get a fresh perspective and start to notice grammar mistakes, misused topic sentences, and so on. Don't be afraid to look at your essay from an outside point of view; it will only make your writing better. 

Essay Editing Tip #3: Print Out Your Paper

Another great way to change your perspective is to print out your own paper. The constant strain of staring at a computer screen for prolonged periods can cause distractions and leave you feeling mentally drained. A tired brain can no longer detect grammar errors, and all your proofreading digitally can go in vain.

By physically holding your research paper in hand, you afford yourself the opportunity to take a step back from the screen and approach the task with renewed spirit. You might have already corrected grammar, but what about formatting mistakes? Maybe some overlooked margins or improperly sized font types made their way into your work. You might have used a lot of long sentences and big words that need to go. Chances are you may have missed some good words to use in essays, and now you get a fresh opportunity to turn your paper into something else.

Check what other good essay words would complement specific passages and improve expression quality overall!

Essay Editing Tip #4: Use a Highlighter

Your writing skills can catapult if you start using some old-fashioned methods of self-editing. Old school writers always walk around with a highlighter in their hands. Highlighting is a great way to focus on individual sentences and vigorously proof check them. 

When editing an essay, finding a mistake and immediately correcting them can lead you to lose focus. It's better to first find all the mistakes and areas of improvement and take action later. 

One of the greatest editing tips from our expert writing services is to use different color highlighters for different kinds of issues. There are four different issue types you may want to look out for. Highlight grammar mistakes, formatting issues, problematic areas, and important information. Use different highlighters for categorizing them so when you come back for refinement; you know what you are dealing with. 

Highlighting can help you quickly and easily find very intricate mistakes that otherwise would be missed, such as identifying misplaced great essay phrases and changing their location to where they make more sense. 

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Essay Editing Tip #5: Read Your Paper Backwards

What about analyzing your final draft upside down? You can challenge your paper and make the editing process fun. Follow our guide on how to edit your essay, and you will never make rookie mistakes.

The essay should make sense from top to bottom and vice versa. Every paragraph you write should be linked with one another and make sense on its own. 

Start at the end and question the last sentence. Does it make sense? Is it compelling? Does it relate to the thesis statement? Could a random person figure out what the rest of the essay was about? Step by step, move upwards and question each paragraph carefully. 

Focus on sentence fragments and individual words. Question if they are proper words to use in an essay. This will not only help you notice spelling mistakes and typos but also improve the overall quality of your academic writing.

Listen to the flow. When reading backward, it is easier to notice whether the text is well-constructed and easy to follow. You will be able to notice where the paper needs refinement with better transitional sentences. You may have used faulty parallelism or unnecessary information that needs to be removed. 

Don't forget to look for consistency. Check the formatting and citation style and make sure they comply with the requirements. Students often forget to proofread the reference list. 

Essay Editing Tip #6: Use a Checklist

To ensure that your essay is error-free and effectively transmits your intended message, you can use an editing checklist. It is always a good idea to check your writing against pre-set criteria. Here are some of the items from our ' do my essay ' experts you can put on your checklist and use while editing an essay.

Introduction - Does it introduce readers to the background story and context? Is it engaging?

Thesis statement - Does it effectively convey what the essay is about? Is it clear and concise? 

Central paragraphs - Are main arguments well supported? Are they well-organized and logically coherent? 

Transitions - Do the paragraphs link with one another with proper transitional sentences?

Conclusion - Does it provide an effective summary of the essay? Is it memorable?

Grammar - Are there any spelling errors? Did you use the correct syntax? Have you used proper words for essays?

Formatting - Does the citation style follow the proposed guide of essay writing format ? Have you referenced every source? 

Essay Editing Tip #7: Read Your Paper Out Loud

Another step in our guide on how to edit an essay is reading the document out loud. Once you finish writing and there is little time remaining to catch a breath, you need to get creative and quickly look at your essay with fresh eyes. 

By audibly hearing the sound of each sentence and phrase, you'll gain fresh insight into how well your ideas flow together cohesively. Research has confirmed that reading the document out loud can help enhance students' writing proficiency as it enables them to easily identify structural issues in their work.

This increased level of focus will help bring attention to any areas that feel particularly clunky or repetitive – issues that may not have been immediately apparent otherwise. It will help you see all the awkward essay language, long sentences, and repeated words.

Beyond basic grammar checks or typos correction, when reading aloud, students also have the opportunity to hone in on things like tone and audience engagement; So next time you finish writing something - don't forget about giving those vocal cords a little exercise!

Essay Editing Tip #8: Change the Environment

The authors of our guide on how to edit a paper say that changing the environment is all it takes to reset. Essay writing takes a lot of focus and determination and therefore is very exhausting. Taking a break is just as important; stretching and moving from room to room is just as important as finding the right words for essays. 

Before revising the paper, go to a park, library, or to your favorite cafe and get a fresh start. Find a comfortable, quiet spot and take over the job. To detect and correct grammar mistakes, you will need a well-rested mind and no distractions.

Sometimes changing the scenery can boost your creativity and give you fresh insights. By doing so, you will likely discover areas within the text that require more attention and refinement, and the solutions will come quicker.

It's important to remember that crafting well-written papers takes time and effort - rushing through them typically results in poor quality.

Essay Editing Tip #9: Use a Dictionary

To enhance the appeal of your writing style, you can find fancy words to use in essays. In the preliminary drafts, allow yourself to express yourself freely through simple sentences and phrases while leaving room for improvements during editing.

Dictionaries can turn into a long-term solution. Use them to improve your spelling. Even some commonly made errors could easily be eliminated with this practice.

Using a dictionary can also introduce good essay words in your vocabulary. Incorporating advanced terms into limited word count assignments can significantly elevate its quality from average to exceptional whilst enhancing clarity in expression as well.

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FAQs: What Else You Need to Know on Editing an Essay

Our team of experienced writers diligently researched the internet's most frequently asked questions on how to make an essay better and answered them all for you to equip you with all the necessary tools for enhancing your writing skills.

So take some time out, read through our comprehensive responses, and unlock your full potential as a writer!

What are the 5 C's of Editing?

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Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

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Guide to Essay Editing: Methods, Tips, & Examples

• Tags: Essay , Essay Editing

When it comes to essay writing, the process of editing is often glossed over and is reduced to last-minute connections. However, thorough essay editing helps you stand out from the crowd. A skillfully written essay not only involves impressive writing, but also meticulous editing.  

In this article, we will walk you through the process of essay editing and understand why it is important. Without any further ado, let’s get to it! 

What is essay editing?

Essay editing involves performing grammatical or structural checks in order to improve the readability and coherence of your essay. While most believe that editing an essay simply involves proofreading it, it is actually a much more extensive process. 

Essay editing involves multiple processes, such as restructuring sentences and paragraphs, correcting tone or cohesiveness, eliminating fluff content and redundancies, and finally, proofreading. 

Why is essay editing important?

Meticulous editing is crucial in improving the clarity and coherence of your ideas. It not only brings out the core message of your essay but also provides a proper structure to your essay.

Here are a few more reasons as to why essay editing is important: 

1. Helps correct structural inconsistencies.

Effective editing helps detect structural and tonal inconsistencies that don’t fit in with a particular paragraph or the essay as a whole. These inconsistencies can then be rephrased, restructured, or completely eliminated from your essay. 

2. Helps simplify your essay.

Complex words and run-on sentences make your essay verbose and obscure its core message. In order to establish a strong central idea, it is crucial to meticulously edit your essay. Through editing, you can not only refine and clarify the central message of your essay but also make it more readable.

3. Helps filter out unnecessary information.

Editing helps get rid of redundancies, filler, or fluff content which cleans up the sentences and paragraphs of your essay. Eliminating these redundancies makes your content more succinct, clear, and concise. 

4. Helps correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.

The importance of spelling, grammar, and punctuation cannot be understated. A single misplaced comma can change the meaning of a sentence and create a poor impression on the reader. Proofreading ensures that such errors are not made. It involves correcting any major or minor spelling and grammar errors.

Now that we’ve understood the importance of essay editing, let’s take a look at the following example:

The mission of Voyager 1 was to go study the big gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, and then continue its journey beyond the solar system. As it journeyed on , it sent back lots of pictures and data about the planets it passed. One of the cool things it discovered was the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, which is a storm that’s been going on for centuries. It’s amazing that Voyager 1 was able to capture all of this information and bring it back to us on Earth .

Voyager 1 was launched with the aim of studying gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn and venturing beyond the solar system. While on its journey across the solar system, it captured numerous images and gathered relevant data on multiple planets. One of its most fascinating discoveries was the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, an ongoing storm lasting for centuries. The ability to gather information about previously unexplored terrains is certainly a feat achieved by Voyager 1.

As you can see, there are plenty of grammatical and tonal inconsistencies in the first example. There is also use of informal language which is not consistent with this essay type. The second example shows what the grammatically correct, tonally consistent, edited version should look like.

What does an editor look for in your essay?

Professional essay editing services are trained to spot the most minute of structural and grammatical errors and are trained in college, as well as admission essay editing. They not only help point out surface-level errors in spelling and punctuation but conduct an in-depth analysis of your essay. 

Here’s what a professional editor looks for in your essay:

1. Errors in spelling and grammar:

This includes ensuring subject-verb agreement, conducting spellchecks on commonly misspelled words, or even maintaining consistency in the tense of your essay.

2. Errors in the use of technical terms: 

This includes ensuring the appropriate usage of signs, symbols, and units of measurement.

3. Inconsistencies in referencing styles: 

This task includes spotting errors and inconsistencies in major referencing style guides such as MLA, APA, and Chicago .

4. Issues in the layout: 

This includes maintaining consistency in essay formatting and ensuring proper use of graphs, tables, images, and figures.

5. Inconsistencies in tone: 

This involves simplifying run-on sentences, filtering out redundancies, and ensuring a consistent tone throughout the essay.

 6. Logical gaps in arguments: 

This includes detecting logical fallacies or gaps in arguments and making suggestions to correct these fallacies. 

7. Plagiarism : 

This involves thoroughly scanning the essay to ensure the originality of the content and detecting unintentional plagiarism. 

8. Conformity to referencing guidelines:  

This task includes cross-checking in-text citations and references and ensuring they conform to the prescribed guidelines.

9. Inconsistencies in formatting: 

This includes correcting inconsistencies in prescribed formatting guidelines.

Why should you hire a human editor? 

College essay editing requires significant expertise and attention to detail. Although essay writing tools such as Grammarly are useful in correcting surface-level errors, they are not complex enough to ensure 100% accuracy. They lack the human touch and are unable to detect various contextual and structural errors.

For instance, a proofreading tool will not detect any error in the following sentence, although it’s grammatically incorrect.

With who am I speaking?

It is clear that “I” is the subject in the sentence, hence the object should be “whom”. Such errors are ignored by online essay editing tools and require human intervention. 

Steps to self-edit your essay 

Although consulting a human editor will make your job significantly easier, the college essay editing cost can sometimes be a burden. If you prefer self-editing your essay, you can use the following steps to help you ace your assignment.

1. Take a break

It is challenging to identify errors and inconsistencies in your essay immediately after writing it. Make sure to take a break and return to your work later with fresh eyes. This will help you view your essay from different perspectives and identify problem areas. You can also do this by asking friends or family members to review your work and provide necessary feedback. 

2. Start with major structural errors

Start off with a comprehensive overview. This includes creating a cohesive structure and ensuring the proper flow of arguments. Make sure that all your topics and concluding sentences highlight the importance of your thesis statement. You can also cut-and-paste parts of sentences or paragraphs to build momentum throughout your writing. 

3. Condense wordy sentences and paragraphs

After rearranging the major paragraphs to ensure a smooth-flowing structure, it’s time to cut the fluff. This may include repetitive information, filler content, as well as redundancies. Cutting out unnecessary information makes your essay concise and to the point, allowing your readers to focus on the key points of your argument.

4. Simplify jargon

It’s important to limit the use of jargon and ensure that your essay is accessible and easy to understand. While technical terms can be used in certain contexts, make sure to use them sparingly and accurately. It is important to strike a balance between technical and non-technical language. This will help you can write an essay that is both informative and engaging.

5. Ensure proper use of punctuation 

Avoid using lengthy run-on sentences that can be difficult to follow. Use clear, concise sentences that convey your ideas effectively. When it comes to academic writing, avoid using exclamation marks and em-dashes. They can be seen as highly informal and are usually used in stories or creative works. 

6. Maintain consistency in formatting throughout your essay

Make sure to stick to your university’s formatting and style guidelines when writing essays. This includes using headings and subheadings correctly, and ensuring that the font size and style are consistent throughout your essay. You can also make key points stand out by using bold or italicized text when necessary. 

The above pointers show how editing essays is tedious and can be time-consuming. As editing experts , we can make the editing process simpler for you. 

To reduce your challenges while writing essays, we have created extensive resources for you. You can bookmark the following resources and revisit them to clarify any doubts about essay writing! 

• Guide to a Perfect Descriptive Essay [Examples & Outline Included]
• How to Start an Essay: 4 Introduction Paragraph Examples
• How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay (Examples Included!)
• Compare and Contrast Essay | Quick Guide with Examples
• How to Write an Argumentative Essay (Examples Included)

Frequently Asked Questions

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This resource covers process and strategy, not correctness rules. For help there, see our many resources on grammar,    mechanics ,  and punctuation .

There are multiple levels of editing, and terminology surrounding editing is often used interchangeably and fluidly. These levels have some overlap between each other, rather than being totally discrete stages; similarly, developmental and substantive editing are more closely related to the "revision" step of the writing process. The four editing levels are:

• Developmental editing: looking at the overall development of the piece, for instance looking for organizational patterns, missing information, inaccurate information, or anything that might confuse a reader
• Substantive editing: making changes to ensure sections (all the way down to paragraphs and sentences) flow logically from one to the next, ensure each paragraph's topic sentence is present and accurate, adding new necessary material to make connections between ideas, removing unnecessary material
• Copyediting: addressing sentence level issues such as style inconsistencies, subject-verb agreement, confusing or wordy phrasing, missing words, missing or inaccurate citations, and any other mechanical or grammatical issues that may be present
• Proofreading: usually the "last pass" before submission or publication; ensuring everything is correct and no lingering errors such as typos, missing words, missing punctuation, etc. remain.

In general, writers should follow this list down in order when revising and editing, from higher order to lower order concerns (in other words, from bigger or more impactful issues to smaller and less impactful issues).

While many writers edit alone at some point during the process, many writers also edit with a partner or writing group. Working with others is strongly recommended when editing; typically, this stage of the writing process comes last or close to last, meaning that writers are more likely to overlook mistakes or potential opportunities (because they have been working on the text for so long). It can be hard for writers to imagine other possibilities beyond what they have already written. A partner or group brings fresh perspective and a real audience who can offer feedback and tell the writer more about what it's like to read their writing. 

If you're intrigued by the idea of a writing group but not sure where to start, you might check out these resources: 

• OWL Vidcast: Writing Groups & How to Form Them
• Writing Groups Toolkit from University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Editing Before Submission

When you're ready to edit, it's important to start with higher order concerns and move down to lower order concerns (as stated above). For higher order concerns, see the editing and revision tips on our Organization and Structure page. For lower order concerns (and sometimes higher order concerns — you might realize something about organization while reading carefully for sentence level issues!), here's a list of strategies that our tutors recommend in sessions with graduate writers. They're usually adaptable to different preferences you might have about working digitally vs. on paper, or working alone vs. with a partner or group. Be creative to find what works for you!

• Read aloud. You can do this yourself, get your computer to read your text out, or ask a friend. Hearing your writing read aloud can help identify places where sentences are confusing or difficult to read, highlight missing words, and create some distance between you and your writing so you can more easily evaluate it.
• Color code. You might do this by highlighting or changing font colors on your screen, using markers on paper, or even without color using font styles and sizes. This technique is useful for various applications, including identifying parts of sentences, identifying particular words or phrases you repeat often, or categorizing sentences by idea to check organization.
• Pick individual issues. When you read through with your focus on only one thing, like correcting comma errors or looking for all the places you write "the ways in which," you're less likely to miss instances of that error by getting distracted with other issues.
• Use checklists. Venues such as journals and conferences often have checklists for authors to use when preparing manuscripts; if you don't have a checklist from a professor, you can sometimes use these checklists to help guide your editing for writing for courses as well. You can also keep a checklist of known issues that your writing partners, professors, tutors, or mentors have mentioned on previous writing assignments to help you look for things you know you do (for instance, one former tutor always put her topic sentences at the ends of paragraphs — she keeps this item in a revision and editing checklist and it's one of the first things she addresses when she edits).

Editing with Feedback

Often, graduate students will be writing or editing with some type of feedback. This could be from peers in a class, from an instructor or mentor, or from a peer reviewer at a conference or journal. If you're in this situation, please see our resources on writing with feedback for more strategies and tips.

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Throughout your university studies, you may have to write a lot of essays. Each one is a chance to showcase your ideas and the research you have done. But to ensure you get the marks you deserve, your writing needs to be clear, concise, and error free. And that’s where our essay proofreading service comes in.

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Expert Essay Proofreaders

Our team of professional proofreaders has helped thousands of students refine their academic writing. And with our extensive editing experience, we are perfectly equipped to help you prepare a first-rate essay.

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing

Essay Proofreading And Editing

When you submit a document, one of our expert essay proofreaders will:

• Ensure punctuation, spelling, and grammar are correct
• Refine sentence structure to ensure your writing reads smoothly
• Highlight any inconsistencies or unclear text
• Check that your tone and vocabulary are suitably academic
• Flag issues with citations or references

After this, we will provide two copies of your edited essay:

• A ‘Clean’ copy in the original file format
• An MS Word Track Changes  copy

You can use this Track Changes copy to review every edit we make, so you are always in control of the final draft. And if your  chosen file type  doesn’t support Track Changes, we will adapt our process to match.

If you are writing an essay for university, we will always follow  academic plagiarism guidelines  when we proofread your document. This protects your academic integrity, allowing you to submit your work with confidence.

However, we also offer a full  editing service  for non-student documents, so we may still be able to help if you have an essay that needs more work. Just let us know your situation and we’ll see what we can do.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, getting college essay help: important do's and don’ts.

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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8.4 Revising and Editing

Learning objectives.

• Identify major areas of concern in the draft essay during revising and editing.
• Use peer reviews and editing checklists to assist revising and editing.
• Revise and edit the first draft of your essay and produce a final draft.

Revising and editing are the two tasks you undertake to significantly improve your essay. Both are very important elements of the writing process. You may think that a completed first draft means little improvement is needed. However, even experienced writers need to improve their drafts and rely on peers during revising and editing. You may know that athletes miss catches, fumble balls, or overshoot goals. Dancers forget steps, turn too slowly, or miss beats. For both athletes and dancers, the more they practice, the stronger their performance will become. Web designers seek better images, a more clever design, or a more appealing background for their web pages. Writing has the same capacity to profit from improvement and revision.

Understanding the Purpose of Revising and Editing

Revising and editing allow you to examine two important aspects of your writing separately, so that you can give each task your undivided attention.

• When you revise , you take a second look at your ideas. You might add, cut, move, or change information in order to make your ideas clearer, more accurate, more interesting, or more convincing.
• When you edit , you take a second look at how you expressed your ideas. You add or change words. You fix any problems in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. You improve your writing style. You make your essay into a polished, mature piece of writing, the end product of your best efforts.

How do you get the best out of your revisions and editing? Here are some strategies that writers have developed to look at their first drafts from a fresh perspective. Try them over the course of this semester; then keep using the ones that bring results.

• Take a break. You are proud of what you wrote, but you might be too close to it to make changes. Set aside your writing for a few hours or even a day until you can look at it objectively.
• Ask someone you trust for feedback and constructive criticism.
• Pretend you are one of your readers. Are you satisfied or dissatisfied? Why?
• Use the resources that your college provides. Find out where your school’s writing lab is located and ask about the assistance they provide online and in person.

Many people hear the words critic , critical , and criticism and pick up only negative vibes that provoke feelings that make them blush, grumble, or shout. However, as a writer and a thinker, you need to learn to be critical of yourself in a positive way and have high expectations for your work. You also need to train your eye and trust your ability to fix what needs fixing. For this, you need to teach yourself where to look.

Creating Unity and Coherence

Following your outline closely offers you a reasonable guarantee that your writing will stay on purpose and not drift away from the controlling idea. However, when writers are rushed, are tired, or cannot find the right words, their writing may become less than they want it to be. Their writing may no longer be clear and concise, and they may be adding information that is not needed to develop the main idea.

When a piece of writing has unity , all the ideas in each paragraph and in the entire essay clearly belong and are arranged in an order that makes logical sense. When the writing has coherence , the ideas flow smoothly. The wording clearly indicates how one idea leads to another within a paragraph and from paragraph to paragraph.

Reading your writing aloud will often help you find problems with unity and coherence. Listen for the clarity and flow of your ideas. Identify places where you find yourself confused, and write a note to yourself about possible fixes.

Creating Unity

Sometimes writers get caught up in the moment and cannot resist a good digression. Even though you might enjoy such detours when you chat with friends, unplanned digressions usually harm a piece of writing.

Mariah stayed close to her outline when she drafted the three body paragraphs of her essay she tentatively titled “Digital Technology: The Newest and the Best at What Price?” But a recent shopping trip for an HDTV upset her enough that she digressed from the main topic of her third paragraph and included comments about the sales staff at the electronics store she visited. When she revised her essay, she deleted the off-topic sentences that affected the unity of the paragraph.

Read the following paragraph twice, the first time without Mariah’s changes, and the second time with them.

Nothing is more confusing to me than choosing among televisions. It confuses lots of people who want a new high-definition digital television (HDTV) with a large screen to watch sports and DVDs on. You could listen to the guys in the electronics store, but word has it they know little more than you do. They want to sell what they have in stock, not what best fits your needs. You face decisions you never had to make with the old, bulky picture-tube televisions. Screen resolution means the number of horizontal scan lines the screen can show. This resolution is often 1080p, or full HD, or 768p. The trouble is that if you have a smaller screen, 32 inches or 37 inches diagonal, you won’t be able to tell the difference with the naked eye. The 1080p televisions cost more, though, so those are what the salespeople want you to buy. They get bigger commissions. The other important decision you face as you walk around the sales floor is whether to get a plasma screen or an LCD screen. Now here the salespeople may finally give you decent info. Plasma flat-panel television screens can be much larger in diameter than their LCD rivals. Plasma screens show truer blacks and can be viewed at a wider angle than current LCD screens. But be careful and tell the salesperson you have budget constraints. Large flat-panel plasma screens are much more expensive than flat-screen LCD models. Don’t let someone make you by more television than you need!

Answer the following two questions about Mariah’s paragraph:

Collaboration

Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

• Now start to revise the first draft of the essay you wrote in Section 8 “Writing Your Own First Draft” . Reread it to find any statements that affect the unity of your writing. Decide how best to revise.

When you reread your writing to find revisions to make, look for each type of problem in a separate sweep. Read it straight through once to locate any problems with unity. Read it straight through a second time to find problems with coherence. You may follow this same practice during many stages of the writing process.

Writing at Work

Many companies hire copyeditors and proofreaders to help them produce the cleanest possible final drafts of large writing projects. Copyeditors are responsible for suggesting revisions and style changes; proofreaders check documents for any errors in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation that have crept in. Many times, these tasks are done on a freelance basis, with one freelancer working for a variety of clients.

Creating Coherence

Careful writers use transitions to clarify how the ideas in their sentences and paragraphs are related. These words and phrases help the writing flow smoothly. Adding transitions is not the only way to improve coherence, but they are often useful and give a mature feel to your essays. Table 8.3 “Common Transitional Words and Phrases” groups many common transitions according to their purpose.

Table 8.3 Common Transitional Words and Phrases

After Maria revised for unity, she next examined her paragraph about televisions to check for coherence. She looked for places where she needed to add a transition or perhaps reword the text to make the flow of ideas clear. In the version that follows, she has already deleted the sentences that were off topic.

Many writers make their revisions on a printed copy and then transfer them to the version on-screen. They conventionally use a small arrow called a caret (^) to show where to insert an addition or correction.

1. Answer the following questions about Mariah’s revised paragraph.

2. Now return to the first draft of the essay you wrote in Section 8 “Writing Your Own First Draft” and revise it for coherence. Add transition words and phrases where they are needed, and make any other changes that are needed to improve the flow and connection between ideas.

Being Clear and Concise

Some writers are very methodical and painstaking when they write a first draft. Other writers unleash a lot of words in order to get out all that they feel they need to say. Do either of these composing styles match your style? Or is your composing style somewhere in between? No matter which description best fits you, the first draft of almost every piece of writing, no matter its author, can be made clearer and more concise.

If you have a tendency to write too much, you will need to look for unnecessary words. If you have a tendency to be vague or imprecise in your wording, you will need to find specific words to replace any overly general language.

Identifying Wordiness

Sometimes writers use too many words when fewer words will appeal more to their audience and better fit their purpose. Here are some common examples of wordiness to look for in your draft. Eliminating wordiness helps all readers, because it makes your ideas clear, direct, and straightforward.

Sentences that begin with There is or There are .

Wordy: There are two major experiments that the Biology Department sponsors.

Revised: The Biology Department sponsors two major experiments.

Sentences with unnecessary modifiers.

Wordy: Two extremely famous and well-known consumer advocates spoke eloquently in favor of the proposed important legislation.

Revised: Two well-known consumer advocates spoke in favor of the proposed legislation.

Sentences with deadwood phrases that add little to the meaning. Be judicious when you use phrases such as in terms of , with a mind to , on the subject of , as to whether or not , more or less , as far as…is concerned , and similar expressions. You can usually find a more straightforward way to state your point.

Wordy: As a world leader in the field of green technology, the company plans to focus its efforts in the area of geothermal energy.

A report as to whether or not to use geysers as an energy source is in the process of preparation.

Revised: As a world leader in green technology, the company plans to focus on geothermal energy.

A report about using geysers as an energy source is in preparation.

Sentences in the passive voice or with forms of the verb to be . Sentences with passive-voice verbs often create confusion, because the subject of the sentence does not perform an action. Sentences are clearer when the subject of the sentence performs the action and is followed by a strong verb. Use strong active-voice verbs in place of forms of to be , which can lead to wordiness. Avoid passive voice when you can.

Wordy: It might perhaps be said that using a GPS device is something that is a benefit to drivers who have a poor sense of direction.

Revised: Using a GPS device benefits drivers who have a poor sense of direction.

Sentences with constructions that can be shortened.

Wordy: The e-book reader, which is a recent invention, may become as commonplace as the cell phone.

My over-sixty uncle bought an e-book reader, and his wife bought an e-book reader, too.

Revised: The e-book reader, a recent invention, may become as commonplace as the cell phone.

My over-sixty uncle and his wife both bought e-book readers.

Now return once more to the first draft of the essay you have been revising. Check it for unnecessary words. Try making your sentences as concise as they can be.

Choosing Specific, Appropriate Words

Most college essays should be written in formal English suitable for an academic situation. Follow these principles to be sure that your word choice is appropriate. For more information about word choice, see Chapter 4 “Working with Words: Which Word Is Right?” .

• Avoid slang. Find alternatives to bummer , kewl , and rad .
• Avoid language that is overly casual. Write about “men and women” rather than “girls and guys” unless you are trying to create a specific effect. A formal tone calls for formal language.
• Avoid contractions. Use do not in place of don’t , I am in place of I’m , have not in place of haven’t , and so on. Contractions are considered casual speech.
• Avoid clichés. Overused expressions such as green with envy , face the music , better late than never , and similar expressions are empty of meaning and may not appeal to your audience.
• Be careful when you use words that sound alike but have different meanings. Some examples are allusion/illusion , complement/compliment , council/counsel , concurrent/consecutive , founder/flounder , and historic/historical . When in doubt, check a dictionary.
• Choose words with the connotations you want. Choosing a word for its connotations is as important in formal essay writing as it is in all kinds of writing. Compare the positive connotations of the word proud and the negative connotations of arrogant and conceited .
• Use specific words rather than overly general words. Find synonyms for thing , people , nice , good , bad , interesting , and other vague words. Or use specific details to make your exact meaning clear.

Now read the revisions Mariah made to make her third paragraph clearer and more concise. She has already incorporated the changes she made to improve unity and coherence.

1. Answer the following questions about Mariah’s revised paragraph:

2. Now return once more to your essay in progress. Read carefully for problems with word choice. Be sure that your draft is written in formal language and that your word choice is specific and appropriate.

Completing a Peer Review

After working so closely with a piece of writing, writers often need to step back and ask for a more objective reader. What writers most need is feedback from readers who can respond only to the words on the page. When they are ready, writers show their drafts to someone they respect and who can give an honest response about its strengths and weaknesses.

You, too, can ask a peer to read your draft when it is ready. After evaluating the feedback and assessing what is most helpful, the reader’s feedback will help you when you revise your draft. This process is called peer review .

You can work with a partner in your class and identify specific ways to strengthen each other’s essays. Although you may be uncomfortable sharing your writing at first, remember that each writer is working toward the same goal: a final draft that fits the audience and the purpose. Maintaining a positive attitude when providing feedback will put you and your partner at ease. The box that follows provides a useful framework for the peer review session.

Questions for Peer Review

Title of essay: ____________________________________________

Date: ____________________________________________

Writer’s name: ____________________________________________

Peer reviewer’s name: _________________________________________

• This essay is about____________________________________________.
• Your main points in this essay are____________________________________________.
• What I most liked about this essay is____________________________________________.

These three points struck me as your strongest:

These places in your essay are not clear to me:

a. Where: ____________________________________________

Needs improvement because__________________________________________

b. Where: ____________________________________________

Needs improvement because ____________________________________________

c. Where: ____________________________________________

The one additional change you could make that would improve this essay significantly is ____________________________________________.

One of the reasons why word-processing programs build in a reviewing feature is that workgroups have become a common feature in many businesses. Writing is often collaborative, and the members of a workgroup and their supervisors often critique group members’ work and offer feedback that will lead to a better final product.

Exchange essays with a classmate and complete a peer review of each other’s draft in progress. Remember to give positive feedback and to be courteous and polite in your responses. Focus on providing one positive comment and one question for more information to the author.

Using Feedback Objectively

The purpose of peer feedback is to receive constructive criticism of your essay. Your peer reviewer is your first real audience, and you have the opportunity to learn what confuses and delights a reader so that you can improve your work before sharing the final draft with a wider audience (or your intended audience).

It may not be necessary to incorporate every recommendation your peer reviewer makes. However, if you start to observe a pattern in the responses you receive from peer reviewers, you might want to take that feedback into consideration in future assignments. For example, if you read consistent comments about a need for more research, then you may want to consider including more research in future assignments.

Using Feedback from Multiple Sources

You might get feedback from more than one reader as you share different stages of your revised draft. In this situation, you may receive feedback from readers who do not understand the assignment or who lack your involvement with and enthusiasm for it.

You need to evaluate the responses you receive according to two important criteria:

• Determine if the feedback supports the purpose of the assignment.
• Determine if the suggested revisions are appropriate to the audience.

Then, using these standards, accept or reject revision feedback.

Work with two partners. Go back to Note 8.81 “Exercise 4” in this lesson and compare your responses to Activity A, about Mariah’s paragraph, with your partners’. Recall Mariah’s purpose for writing and her audience. Then, working individually, list where you agree and where you disagree about revision needs.

Editing Your Draft

If you have been incorporating each set of revisions as Mariah has, you have produced multiple drafts of your writing. So far, all your changes have been content changes. Perhaps with the help of peer feedback, you have made sure that you sufficiently supported your ideas. You have checked for problems with unity and coherence. You have examined your essay for word choice, revising to cut unnecessary words and to replace weak wording with specific and appropriate wording.

The next step after revising the content is editing. When you edit, you examine the surface features of your text. You examine your spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation. You also make sure you use the proper format when creating your finished assignment.

Editing often takes time. Budgeting time into the writing process allows you to complete additional edits after revising. Editing and proofreading your writing helps you create a finished work that represents your best efforts. Here are a few more tips to remember about your readers:

• Readers do not notice correct spelling, but they do notice misspellings.
• Readers look past your sentences to get to your ideas—unless the sentences are awkward, poorly constructed, and frustrating to read.
• Readers notice when every sentence has the same rhythm as every other sentence, with no variety.
• Readers do not cheer when you use there , their , and they’re correctly, but they notice when you do not.
• Readers will notice the care with which you handled your assignment and your attention to detail in the delivery of an error-free document..

The first section of this book offers a useful review of grammar, mechanics, and usage. Use it to help you eliminate major errors in your writing and refine your understanding of the conventions of language. Do not hesitate to ask for help, too, from peer tutors in your academic department or in the college’s writing lab. In the meantime, use the checklist to help you edit your writing.

Editing Your Writing

• Are some sentences actually sentence fragments?
• Are some sentences run-on sentences? How can I correct them?
• Do some sentences need conjunctions between independent clauses?
• Does every verb agree with its subject?
• Is every verb in the correct tense?
• Are tense forms, especially for irregular verbs, written correctly?
• Have I used subject, object, and possessive personal pronouns correctly?
• Have I used who and whom correctly?
• Is the antecedent of every pronoun clear?
• Do all personal pronouns agree with their antecedents?
• Have I used the correct comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs?
• Is it clear which word a participial phrase modifies, or is it a dangling modifier?

Sentence Structure

• Are all my sentences simple sentences, or do I vary my sentence structure?
• Have I chosen the best coordinating or subordinating conjunctions to join clauses?
• Have I created long, overpacked sentences that should be shortened for clarity?
• Do I see any mistakes in parallel structure?

Punctuation

• Does every sentence end with the correct end punctuation?
• Can I justify the use of every exclamation point?
• Have I used apostrophes correctly to write all singular and plural possessive forms?
• Have I used quotation marks correctly?

Mechanics and Usage

• Can I find any spelling errors? How can I correct them?
• Have I used capital letters where they are needed?
• Have I written abbreviations, where allowed, correctly?
• Can I find any errors in the use of commonly confused words, such as to / too / two ?

Be careful about relying too much on spelling checkers and grammar checkers. A spelling checker cannot recognize that you meant to write principle but wrote principal instead. A grammar checker often queries constructions that are perfectly correct. The program does not understand your meaning; it makes its check against a general set of formulas that might not apply in each instance. If you use a grammar checker, accept the suggestions that make sense, but consider why the suggestions came up.

Proofreading requires patience; it is very easy to read past a mistake. Set your paper aside for at least a few hours, if not a day or more, so your mind will rest. Some professional proofreaders read a text backward so they can concentrate on spelling and punctuation. Another helpful technique is to slowly read a paper aloud, paying attention to every word, letter, and punctuation mark.

If you need additional proofreading help, ask a reliable friend, a classmate, or a peer tutor to make a final pass on your paper to look for anything you missed.

Remember to use proper format when creating your finished assignment. Sometimes an instructor, a department, or a college will require students to follow specific instructions on titles, margins, page numbers, or the location of the writer’s name. These requirements may be more detailed and rigid for research projects and term papers, which often observe the American Psychological Association (APA) or Modern Language Association (MLA) style guides, especially when citations of sources are included.

To ensure the format is correct and follows any specific instructions, make a final check before you submit an assignment.

With the help of the checklist, edit and proofread your essay.

Key Takeaways

• Revising and editing are the stages of the writing process in which you improve your work before producing a final draft.
• During revising, you add, cut, move, or change information in order to improve content.
• During editing, you take a second look at the words and sentences you used to express your ideas and fix any problems in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.
• Unity in writing means that all the ideas in each paragraph and in the entire essay clearly belong together and are arranged in an order that makes logical sense.
• Coherence in writing means that the writer’s wording clearly indicates how one idea leads to another within a paragraph and between paragraphs.
• Transitional words and phrases effectively make writing more coherent.
• Writing should be clear and concise, with no unnecessary words.
• Effective formal writing uses specific, appropriate words and avoids slang, contractions, clichés, and overly general words.
• Peer reviews, done properly, can give writers objective feedback about their writing. It is the writer’s responsibility to evaluate the results of peer reviews and incorporate only useful feedback.
• Remember to budget time for careful editing and proofreading. Use all available resources, including editing checklists, peer editing, and your institution’s writing lab, to improve your editing skills.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

How to Edit an Essay

How to Edit an Essay– An Overview ‍ ‍

When editing an essay, it's crucial to first ensure that the overall structure is coherent and logical. Begin by shortening lengthy sentences and paragraphs to improve readability. Avoid using overly complex language, which can obscure your message. Be vigilant for any repetitive ideas or words, as they can detract from the clarity of your argument. While spellcheck can be helpful, don't rely solely on it for accuracy. Actively search for and correct typos. Lastly, remove any superfluous words and be cautious of using vague or non-committal language that can weaken your statements.

Editing an essay effectively involves several key steps to enhance clarity, coherence, and overall impact. Here's a step-by-step guide:

• Review the Structure : Ensure your essay has a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction should present your thesis statement or main argument, the body should contain your supporting points, and the conclusion should summarize and restate your main points.
• Check for Clarity and Coherence : Ensure each paragraph has a clear main idea and that ideas flow logically from one paragraph to the next. Use transitional phrases to help guide the reader.
• Focus on Sentence Structure : Vary your sentence lengths and structures to maintain reader interest. Avoid overly long sentences, as they can be confusing.
• Simplify Language : Remove jargon and unnecessarily complex vocabulary. The goal is to be clear and concise, making your essay accessible to a broader audience.
• Eliminate Repetition : Check for repeated words, phrases, or ideas and eliminate them. Repetition can be redundant and detract from the effectiveness of your argument.
• Correct Grammar and Spelling : While software can help, manually check for grammar and spelling errors to ensure accuracy.
• Watch for Punctuation and Formatting : Proper punctuation and consistent formatting contribute to the professionalism of your essay.
• Trim Unnecessary Words : Remove filler words and phrases that don't add value to your argument.
• Fact-Check : Verify the accuracy of any data, quotes, or references you use.
• Seek Feedback : If possible, have someone else read your essay. Fresh eyes can spot errors and inconsistencies you might have missed.
• Read Aloud : Reading your essay aloud can help you catch awkward phrasing and errors that you might not see when reading silently.
• Final Review : Go through your essay one last time to ensure all your edits have improved clarity, logic, and flow.

Remember, effective editing often requires multiple read-throughs and revisions. Take your time to refine your essay until it clearly and effectively communicates your ideas.

How to Edit a Essay By Following These Editing Principles?

When we are writing an essay– or any other writeup there is, we are often guided by different principles. These principles are like a clear pathway toward creating a compelling and well-thought-out work of art. They separate the best from the rest, aesthetic and unpleasing, masterpiece and trash.

The same goes for the process of editing. This process likewise follows some key principles that regulate editors on their work as revisioners. While they help editors foster a set of ethical standards for editing, they also ensure that the content of the writeup itself is beneficial: it can serve its purpose. The following are the principles of editing and the key questions that you might want to ask yourself in consideration:

From the word itself, the writeup must be clear. In what sense? In the skill of writing, clarity may be straightforward, but it takes a lot of work for us to make a writeup that is easy to understand.

We are confounded with various writing guidelines and things to integrate into our writing. This condition takes us away from the principle of clarity. ‍

The rule of thumb here, though, is this: clear your desk (translate: mind), set your mind on your ultimate writing goal (translate: main idea), and keep it as apparent as possible in your writing. In a broader explanation, you have to set aside other writing endeavors – choosing complex words, forming lots of paragraphs, introducing tropes and figurative language, and focusing on the important thing: constructing your thesis statement and using writing techniques that can make your idea more comprehensible.

2. Coherence

We have a lot to say, and the best thing to relay these ideas and thoughts is through writing.

When we have numerous things to rely upon, emotions may run high and take over our writing, causing us to make some “mess” and deviate from sharing our ideas neatly. Yes, you heard it right: writing does not just communicate our minds in whatever manner we want. This macro skill also demands us to write neatly – logically and lucidly. ‍

In doing so, we have to maintain a logical and consistent flow of thoughts. It is like being one with nature: although we cannot understand it in its simplest form, we feel like everything goes fine because of its order and flow.

Coherence, the principle that talks about flow, also means the ideas are connected logically, and transitions from one idea to another are built well. Coherence can go a long way in a writeup, as it guides your readers from the start to the end of your writing, all while making sure that they have grasped the important points of your writing. 

3. Grammar and Style

Grammar and style are probably the most sought-after principles, along with being the most tedious ones to handle in writing. These principles can be too technical and book-ish, and it takes years to be accurate grammatically and stylistically. You must learn various grammatical concepts and create your own writing style that follows certain conventions and tropes that you only apply to your writing endeavors. ‍

However, we do not follow these principles for nothing. Aside from effective communication and clarity of expression, which have their own principles by the way, grammar reflects the uprightness and credibility of a writer. Since a written piece upholds quality and refinement, we do not want to risk the possibility of committing mistakes that will leave a disappointing impression on our readers. ‍

In fact, it is generally believed that readers prefer written pieces that are well-written– those that are free from any grammatical lapses. Imagine if you committed those mistakes (especially if they are too common): you will definitely walk in shame and contact an essay editing service in no time!

How to Go Around Essay Editing In 3 Stages?

Just like writing, the process of editing is scientific and objective. Contrary to popular belief, essay editing starts with a specific process and ends similarly. One process must be done before the other. Missing one process does not satisfy the rigor of editing.

In the simplest sense, all the editing processes we will discuss in this section are important and should not be overlooked. There are three editing stages: content editing, copy editing, and proofreading. Each stage plays a crucial role in the whole process, refining the document, spotting crucial errors, and maximizing readability and comprehension.

1. Content Editing

Content editing, with its other name substantive editing , is the initial stage of the editing process. At this stage, the editor concentrates on the writeup’s substance, structure, and overall quality. As we all know, nothing beats the comprehensiveness of a writeup’s content, and it gets even more comprehensive in the process of editing! You can edit my essay and do this editing stage if you want to experience the rigor.

The main aims of content editing are to ensure that the content is clear, coherent, and effectively conveys the intended message to the target audience. In short, it edits the content to maximize its capability to relay its intended purpose.

Key Sub-processes of Content Editing:

* Assess Overall Structure and Organization. Logical sequence and coherence are put in check on this sub-process.

* Evaluate Content and Clarity . The editor assures that the message or argument is well-defined and substantiated with appropriate evidence.

* Enhance Transitions and Signposting . The editor looks for means to enhance transitions between paragraphs and sections, making the text smoother and more reader-friendly. Aside from transition devices used in the first parts of each of the paragraphs, one may use signposts like topic sentences and headings to steer the reader through the content.

* Revise and Rewrite on Critical Content Issues . When deemed necessary, the editor may recommend or make significant revisions or rewrites to strengthen the content, eliminate redundancy, and enhance clarity.

2. Copy editing

This is the stage where it gets a bit technical for editors. Copy editing is the second stage of the entire editing process and focuses on the technical elements of the text. It concerns checking for grammatical and punctuation errors and ensuring consistent language usage, style, and compliance with a specific style guide. Copy editing’s main goal is to enhance the readability and correctness of the text, as well as establish the text’s credibility and trustworthiness.

Key Sub-processes of Copy Editing:

* Grammar and Punctuation . The editor implements grammar checks for spelling errors or other grammatical errors, including but not limited to subject-verb agreement, verb tense, and sentence structure. The text’s mechanics, or checking punctuation marks, may also be a focus for editing.

* Spelling and Usage . Spelling mistakes and inconsistencies in word usage (per the type of English one is using) are identified and corrected. Editors catch errors with redundant words, word count, body paragraphs, and passive voice.

* Capitalization and Formatting . The editor verifies that capitalization, headings, and formatting are uniform and appropriate to the type of writing.

* Fact-Checking . This sub-section ensures the accuracy of data, facts, figures, and references. The editor cross-references information with trustworthy sources and flags any instances of plagiarism and incorrect referencing.

* Style and Clarity . Editors persevere to improve sentence structure, eliminate vagueness, and enhance text readability.

3. Proofreading

This is the final stage of the editing process and is focused on scanning the document for “crumbs” left during the previous two stages– minor errors and inconsistencies. It is the last opportunity for the editor to catch any remaining typos, formatting issues, or other small mistakes before the document is brought to finality.

Key Sub-processes of Proofreading:

*Final Grammar and Spelling Check . The editor conducts a final review to identify and correct any grammatical or spelling errors that may have been overlooked. The final draft has an immaculate paragraph structure that's free of unnecessary words, grammar mistakes, or sentence fragments.

*Formatting and Layout . This step guarantees that the document adheres to consistent formatting, including margins, fonts, and spacing.

*Page Numbers and Table of Contents. The editor confirms that page numbers, footnotes, and the table of contents are correct and properly formatted.

* Hyperlinks and References . For digital documents, the editor checks that hyperlinks are functional and correctly correspond to the anchor text. They also ensure that references and citations are correct.

*Overall Readability . Finally, the editor scans the entire document one last time to identify any minimal errors, inconsistencies, or issues that might have been missed in previous stages.

How to Edit Essays: A Step-by-Step Guide

Now that you are familiar with the three main stages of editing essays– content editing, copy editing, and proofreading, we are confident that you may now have an understanding of how an entire editing process may come into play. The best thing is that you may take off your editing journey without being too pressured to follow a certain blueprint.

Yes, you read it correctly: you can craft your own editing process. Just ensure that you capture every essence of the three main stages. To provide you with a guide, the following is a 7-point checklist that you may use to edit your essay.

This table is a synthesis of everything we discussed in the three stages of editing.

Leverage the Studyfy Way

One may definitely follow a guideline like the one above, but an essay revision service can do so much more. At Studyfy, you can avail of its high-quality writing services, where a roster of competent writers and editors completely transform a writing prompt into a creative masterpiece– one that adheres to the perfect style, formatting, and instructions.

Enjoy Studyfy’s no-mark-up scheme and affordable price range without worrying about the finished product’s reliability and readability– quality is a top priority, indeed. How to edit an essay well: sorted!

How to Edit Your Essay in Various Forms?

Essays are pieces of writing that discuss various topics and hold different functions depending on the writing prompt, purpose, and audience, among others. Given its eclectic nature, essays can be tricky to edit. Some principles on how to edit an essay may not be as important in some types, and some steps are as important as others.

We know the difficulty that you might contend with in editing different forms of essays, so we are here to help you by providing a cheat sheet on the common essay types and some techniques on how to edit them.

How to Edit an Essay Using Various Editing Techniques

Reflective essay.

How to Write a Reflective Essay ? This essay involves self-introspection and analysis.Similar to a narrative essay, the goal of this essay type is to internalize and explore their thoughts and narrate a personal experience to readers who are likewise experiencing it.

Self-Reflection Enhancemen

• Ensure that the essay effectively relays personal experiences, thoughts, and insights.
• Evaluate the thesis statement in consideration of its essence and clarity.
• Evaluate the depth of self-analysis and introspection.
• Assess the essay’s emotional resonance and the perceived emotional impact on the reader.
• Analyze the organization of content, ensuring a structured format and exploration of themes.

Argumentative Essay

• This essay type presents a debatable proposition, a stand, and pieces of evidence that substantiate the writer’s stand.
• It is used to persuade the reader to take a particular viewpoint.

Argument Strengthening

• When editing an essay, ensure that the proposition is clear and debatable.
• Check for the logical flow of arguments and counterarguments.
• Evaluate the evidence and examples that support the claims.
• Verify that the conclusion aligns with the main argument and discourses opposing views.

Expository Essay

• It is embedded with facts, figures, findings, and other related factual information.
• Its aim is to provide and explain concepts, ideas, theories, or topics.

Clarity and Information Flow Enhancement

• Check if the essay has a clear and informative introduction.
• Check for the organization of content to ensure a logical sequence of ideas.
• When editing an essay, elucidate complex concepts with definitions and examples.
• Cross-reference facts and figures for exactness.

Narrative Essay

• A winning narrative piece is one that vividly tells a story– ensuring that the readers are inside the world that you want to immortalize.
• It is supplied with descriptive words, figurative language, a clear plot structure, and a consistent point of view.

Storytelling Focusing while Editing Essays

• Ensure the essay has a clear plot structure– beginning, middle, and end.
• Check for reasonable character development.
• Pay attention to imagery and descriptive language to enhance the reader's experience.
• Check for the pacing of the narrative to maintain engagement.

Persuasive Essay

• It uses persuasive diction and techniques, pieces of evidence, and logical reasoning to take persuasion to effect.
• Its aim is to make the reader adopt a certain and fresh perspective and subsequently take a course of action.

Persuasion Intensification and How to Edit Essay

• Evaluate the thesis statement in terms of influence and clarity.
• Integrate persuasive techniques like ethos, pathos, and logos .
• Assess the soundness and relevance of supporting evidence and examples.
• Ensure that counterarguments are accepted and refuted effectively.
• Ensure a conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How can editing help me ace my writing assignments if it’s another burden to do.

Editing may be a tough act to do after writing, but it can be a walk in the park if you master the skill. Practice it continuously and be devoted (translate: consistent) to doing it until you no longer find it difficult and laborious.

How can editing an essay be simplified if I no longer have sufficient time to do it?

You can always simplify your editing routine when time is running out. Editing essays can be as simple as having three pointers: (a) Checking for major grammar lapses; (b) Evaluating content based on its clarity and coherence; and (c) Checking for formatting guidelines.

How to edit an essay well if the guidelines are only specific to one element of text?

In connection with the previous question, you may opt to use a personalized editing routine and that includes considering one element over the others. You may allot a big remainder of your time editing that element, but always ensure that you edit the important things on a text, no matter how focused you are on a particular element.

To edit an essay is really hard for me. Do I have the option to just skip it?

I probably can think of a scenario where you are asking a question like this: “Can somebody write my paper and edit it? This is way too much for me!” While writing and editing are intertwined, and we have no means of skipping them, writing and editing services like Studyfy can finish the work for you.

Created personally for you and your writing needs, these services are strong with competent and reliable writers who can go the extra mile in finishing your writeups while adhering to the intended style, format, and content.

Writing Lab

Writing your paper.

• Topic of Paper
• Brainstorming

Revising and Editing Tutorial

Editing checklist, revision video.

• Proofreading

Revising and editing ensure a paper communicates its message effectively. This process involves examining the content, structure, and mechanics of writing. Revising focuses on coherence, logical flow, and organization. Editing refines language use, such as word choice, sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation. Considering these aspects, revising and editing enhance the paper's quality, making it more compelling and readable.

This detailed tutorial emphasizes the importance of revising and editing, highlighting how they significantly improve a paper's coherence, organization, and language use, thus making it more compelling and readable.

Revising and Editing opens a new window

When you revise or edit a paper, focus on the  ideas, organization, grammar , spelling,  and   punctuation .

Check ideas and organization

• Is my thesis statement concise and clear?
• Did I follow my outline?
• Are my arguments presented in a logical sequence?
• Are all of the items in my reference page cited in my text?
• Are all of the items cited in my text in my reference page?
• Did I use the proper APA style?
• Have I proved my thesis with strong supporting arguments?
• Have I made my intentions and points clear in the essay? Are my arguments well-supported and well-reasoned? Did I have another reader review my paper?

Check grammar, spelling, and punctuation

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5.5: Editing

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The process of editing is an ongoing activity for all writers. From the time they come up with a possible topic, they begin editing their ideas and directions in which to go. Once they begin to write, however, the editing takes a new path. Writers edit their own work by reading with fresh eyes and deciding if words need to be moved around or changed. They look for misspellings and awkward wording, and they rework for the sake of clarity. They ask themselves, “Is this saying what I think it does? Am I being as clear as possible? Is there a more concise or artful way that I can express this important idea?” They check their work for typos and unintentional repetition of words and phrases, and they check all the grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.

However, it is extremely important not to focus on editing too early in the writing process. If a student writes one sentence or paragraph and immediately begins to edit it, they may find that they lose the flow of their ideas. Suddenly, while focusing on how to spell a word, the whole rest of the essay gets put on hold. The inner editor or critic can inhibit writers, causing them to lose flow and to experience perfectionism and writer’s block. Most instructors recommend that writers ban their critics until they have completed their first drafts and revision has taken place. This saves writers the wasted effort that comes with closely editing material that doesn’t make the final cut anyway.

At later points during the document’s creation, an outside set of editorial eyes may be needed—those of a peer, instructor, colleague, or formal editor—to help move that piece of text toward excellence. In addition to the big-picture structural or information-based considerations, the need for a comma or better word may be the focus of editing efforts. Good editing allows the writer to submit the written creation with the confidence that it is the best it can be and stands as something to truly be proud of.

Grammar: The Grand Dame

According to Merriam-Webster, grammar is a system of rules that defines the structure of a language. For most of the USA, that system is Standard American English (SAE). Grammar is the way people use language rules and how words are used in a certain order to form phrases and clauses that relay a meaning for readers. The term “syntax” (the art of sentence structure) goes hand-in-hand with this.

Writers and speakers of any given language are aware that the rules related to grammar and usage of that language are largely appropriated not by formal instruction and memorization but informally and even subconsciously as one grows up listening, speaking and reading. So it’s important to note that, as those who use language every day, students already have internalized essential grammar rules. Most college writers struggle with only one or two main grammar blind-spots, like how to correctly use a comma or semicolon. Once they master these, they can confidently edit their own work.

Language Usage

Writing is all about decision-making. Writers need to ask, “How should I craft this sentence, this paragraph? Given the effect of two possible punctuation marks, which one should I use? What is the effect of this word instead of that one, so similar in meaning but carrying a more negative connotation?” In this way, writing is about making endless choices.

Precision of Words

Sometimes, in early drafting, writers fall back on words that are vague or boring. For example, consider sentences starting with “This” or “It.” Unless the previous sentence made it totally clear what the “This” or the “It” is, the reader will be confused. For example,

Instead of the following: “This is an exciting point in the movie.”

How about this?

“The surprise ending of movie is exciting.”

The same thing goes for starting a sentence with the personal pronoun “It.” See the two sentences below.

Instead of this: “It caused the audience to break into applause.”

Define the “It” like this. “The final scene caused the audience to break into applause.”

To note, this kind of sentence structure is essentially using words as “filler” to take up space within a sentence and creates a sort of vagueness for the reader who will wonder what the subject of the sentence might be. Sometimes such sentence construction is fine, but writers use it too often.

In addition, many students believe that using one of the following words adds an element of description or accentuation to their phrases; however, these specific words are overused by writers and should be given special consideration:

Trick #1: If writers conduct a global search for each of the three words above, they can use them as “red flags” to alert themselves to the perfect place to try to find a better way of saying what they want to say. How does one improve vocabulary? Use a thesaurus and read more.

What’s a word for “very scary”? Frightening.

What’s another way of saying “really hungry”? Famished.

On another note: The phrase “a lot” has generally outrun it’s usage by the time one reaches college. Generalizations are better avoided, as they are vague and imprecise. Academics prefer statistics and specific, verifiable statements.

Repetition of Words and Phrases

The unintentional repetition of words and phrases is one of the most common oversights writers make. They all have their go-to words—ones that come naturally to them when they speak and write. The general advice is for writers to use a thesaurus to find a synonym for the overused word. However, what if there isn’t a synonym for the word? Look at the paragraph below:

This past summer, I had the opportunity to intern at Sea Life Park. Sea Life Park is known for being an exciting destination for locals and tourists to experience the wonders of sea life from throughout the Pacific. At the park, green sea turtles, or Honu, thrive and even continue to have babies. In addition, dolphins and the Hawaiian monk seals provide visitors with the ability to view these majestic creatures but also learn about their significance within the Pacific Ocean ecosystem and their importance within island culture.

This writer’s paragraph isn’t bad. However, “Sea Life Park” is repeated twice in the first two sentences. In addition, in sentence three, he begins with “At the park” followed by another “sea.” He defended his construction and word choice by stating, “But there isn’t another word for ‘Sea Life Park’.” Indeed, the “find a synonym” strategy would not work in this case just like there isn’t a synonym for “parking lot” or “ice cream sundae.” So another trick has to be used.

Trick #2: If a synonym doesn’t exist, remove the repetitive words and combine the sentences.

This past summer, I had the opportunity to intern at Sea Life Park, known for being an exciting destination for locals and tourists to experience the wonders of sea life from throughout the Pacific.

Replacing the repeated phrase with a comma before “known” does the trick. But wait. The phrase “sea life” appears again a little later in this same sentence. Now what?

Trick #3: Use your creativity to craft an original way of saying the same thing. Instead of “Sea Life Park,” call it “the world-renowned marine playground committed to protection, preservation, and education” and the writer has not only fixed the repetition issue but also introduced wonderfully original prose.

Trick #4: Writers should read everything out loud so the ear can catch what the eye might miss.

Voice, for writers, is something uniquely their own. It’s the way they put words together and involves their distinctive way of looking at the world. It makes one writer’s work stand out from that of others in its originality and authenticity. Key, though, is understanding that the development of one’s writing voice takes time and is ever changing. That’s what makes it so exciting.

Here are samples of sentences from two famous writers. Though both these writers lived in America at approximately the same time, their “voices” are very different. What are the elements that make these sentences so different?

It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the daytime the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. (Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.”)

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care, a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor—he who fathered the edict that no woman should appear on the streets without an apron—remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. (William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily.”)

Style: Style is much broader than voice. Some writers have a writing style that’s complex and packed with personification, metaphor, and imagery. Other writers have a more straightforward style with more simplicity or directness.

Engaging the Reader

When it comes down to it, writers within the academic setting do best when they acknowledge that what they are trying to produce is reader-based prose—written content that informs the reader of the essential message the writer is wanting to convey and also does so in a manner that is engaging and well-received.

On this note, it is important that the reader is able to follow the path of words, images, and meaning that the writer is wanting to create. Readers can become distracted and disinterested by awkward word choices, unintentional repetition, and incorrect spelling, grammar, word usage, and punctuation.

All writers have words that give them hassles, even if they have learned how to spell those words. Does the word “essence” end with a “ce” or “se”? Does the word “privilege” spend any time on the “ledge”?

By the time one reaches college, one knows if spelling words correctly comes easily or not. And everyone knows that spell-checkers won’t pick up every mistake. Writers need to make time for careful editing and proofreading throughout the writing process with an extra special proofreading session before turning in any assignment. In addition, though, here is a trick that can actually help one become a better speller, even into adulthood.

Trick #5: Create a running list of all the words that you tend to misspell. If you find another word, add it to the list. Every time you sit down to write, scroll through your list. You’ll find that the spelling will become less of an issue.

Punctuation and Mechanics

Punctuation refers to the “symbols” writers use to help readers understand and process the information they wish to convey through the sentences they write. Somewhat like the notes and rests within a piece of music help musicians move quickly or slowly through a composition, punctuation marks are used for effect.

Mechanics are established rules within a language system, and sometimes include the individual decisions writers make regarding the use of capitalization, underlining, italicizing, numbers versus numerals, the placement of specific punctuation marks, and how this differs throughout English-speaking countries (e.g., “towards” in the UK is often “toward” in the US, and periods and commas always go inside quotation marks in the U.S. but not in Canada).

For examples, see Table 1:

• Search your draft using the “find” tool for words like “it,” “this,” “really,” “very,” “just” or “you.” See if you can find ways to eliminate these words to make your language sharper, more precise.
• Read the sentences of your essay in backward order, starting with the last sentence in the essay, and then the one above it, all the way up to the first sentence in the essay. This is a great way to find fragments or to hear where the language is repetitive or unclear.
• Make an appointment with a tutor or your instructor. Ask for help doing a close editing of two paragraphs with an eye to learning how to identify typical errors in your work, and then apply your learning to the rest of your essay.

Further Resources

Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides free writing resources and instructional material. Visit The Purdue OWL (Purdue U Writing Lab, 2019).

For further information on the steps of the writing process and tips for each of those steps, read “ The Writing Process ” by Ali Hal ( Daily Writing Tips website, 2019).

For an editing checklist by Mignon Fogarty (also known as “Grammar Girl”), visit “ Grammar Girl’s Editing Checklist ” ( Quick and Dirty Tips website, 2019).

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• References : Lists all sources cited in the thesis.
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While the thesis writing format may seem daunting at first, understanding and following the structured guidelines can simplify the process. You have to consider that during a PhD, you’ll have 3 to 4 years to write a thesis. By breaking down the task into manageable sections and systematically addressing each component, PhD students can make thesis writing more approachable. Additionally, adhering to the format ensures that the thesis is well-organised, which can facilitate the writing and review process.

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Students Critique a ChatGPT Essay

A Classroom Experiment

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Publication Date

September 7, 2023

Perspectives Section

Perspectives Daily

Undergraduate Education

Digital Methods, Teaching Methods

Historians today find ourselves on the bleeding edge of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. It feels like generative AI is everywhere these days, even in places where it’s not welcome. Chatbots like Open AI’s ChatGPT have made disruptive appearances in law , real estate , Hollywood , and of course the classroom, offering up simultaneous promise and peril. While Bill Gates described AI as the “most important tech advance in decades,” many tech visionaries (including Gates), AI developers, and even the White House have called urgently for guardrails on AI’s breakneck development.

A ChatGPT essay on Frederick Douglass turned out much like this engraving: the outlines were there, but details were missing. Library of Congress/public domain

The meteoric rise of chatbots raises questions that, if left unanswered, put history educators in a bind. How can we meaningfully teach historical skills like writing and argumentation if our students can have ChatGPT draft an essay for them in seconds? And how can we assess our students’ understanding of course content if ChatGPT can conjure up instant answers to essay prompts with no learning required? Unsurprisingly, universities, departments, and individual instructors are in a mad scramble to formulate AI policies addressing these urgent questions.

When I first encountered ChatGPT shortly after its November 2022 launch, I admittedly felt a knee-jerk impulse to ban it and forget about it. Like many of my colleagues, I was deeply worried about its potential for academic dishonesty (and I still am). But it was obvious that AI is here to stay. More importantly, as I practiced using ChatGPT, I realized that effective AI use is a learned skill, one today’s students desperately need to learn as chatbots proliferate. If we envision history courses as opportunities to teach the historian’s skill set, we would do well to incorporate new technology like AI into our courses. So, I decided to figure out how I could effectively use ChatGPT in the classroom for my students’ benefit.

Conversations with my students about the chatbot revealed their curiosity about both its uses and limitations . So, I created a classroom experiment to test ChatGPT’s ability to generate authentic, accurate historical essays. I chose to do this experiment live and in person in a spring 2023 upper-level undergraduate history course, but the exercise could also work as a take-home assignment. This particular class, Frederick Douglass’s America, familiarizes students with the life and times of the famous 19th-century abolitionist and introduces the historical research skills that students will need to complete an undergraduate capstone. As we were approaching the semester’s midpoint, I also designed the exercise as an opportunity for students to reflect on what they had learned about Douglass’s life thus far.

Effective AI use is a learned skill, one that today’s students desperately need.

To that end, I asked ChatGPT to “write me an essay about Frederick Douglass and the Civil War.” The program generated a relevant, if basic, biographical sketch of Douglass without “ hallucinating ” any fake information, a notorious shortcoming of ChatGPT. The essay lacked an argument or references, but I didn’t ask for either, so no harm done. Then I graded the essay, which earned a D by my rubric.

Next, I shared the essay with students via Google Docs. (It can be read in full here , along with the lesson plan.) In groups, I asked them to read the essay and identify any sections that needed editing—additions, deletions, or revisions. For 20 minutes, students tackled this assignment in groups and focused on a theme of their choice: Douglass’s life under slavery, his wartime experiences, or his Reconstruction-era activism. Students added their responses in the document using comment bubbles.

Finally, we debriefed. I asked students to describe a factual error they identified and an edit they made to correct or contextualize the essay. Then I asked students to reflect on their biggest takeaway.

This exercise was a smash hit, with terrific student engagement and clear payoffs. Students jumped at the chance to showcase the knowledge they had learned in class to fact-check the essay. Ultimately, they made a few deletions, some additions, and, most importantly, used their higher-order thinking skills to evaluate the essay and add much-needed context to its key points. For example, where ChatGPT matter-of-factly stated that Douglass was born in 1818, students observed that, like many enslaved African Americans, Douglass spent most of his life without knowing his birthdate. This and other legacies of slavery are all too often overlooked by chatbots, which lack contextualization and fine-tuned historical research skills.

Students jumped at the chance to showcase the knowledge they had learned in class to fact-check the essay.

Instead of merely regurgitating information on a midterm exam, students enjoyed probing the limits of what ChatGPT can realistically do—and not do—hopefully disincentivizing future academic misconduct. In their reflections during the debrief, students described how ChatGPT generates essays that seem human-produced and authoritative, but the significant factual errors and lack of analysis in its text often make a poor substitute for how students themselves have learned to write. They also sharpened their writing and editing skills in an engaging activity that felt more pragmatic than a midterm exam.

I learned a lot from this exercise too, which can be adapted readily for a variety of course formats. I came away recognizing that if I had given into the initial impulse to ban ChatGPT, my students would have been robbed of a crucial learning experience to prepare for a world that is rapidly embracing AI. Instead, by incorporating the chatbot into the classroom, my students gained a better understanding of what AI can (and can’t) do, while also sharpening their historical skills and applying their content knowledge.

After all, AI is not disappearing anytime soon, and our students are already using it. Many historians likewise have embraced digital literacy as one of the most essential skills we can teach students, but if educators bury our heads in the sand and attempt to ban AI from the classroom, crucial learning opportunities are lost. So why not bring AI into the classroom and harness its potential to reinforce historical skills and content?

Jonathan S. Jones is an assistant professor at James Madison University. Find him on X (formerly Twitter) @_jonathansjones.

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• Enhanced table operations, allowing for easy adjustment of the order and quantity of rows and columns in the table, and the ability to wrap within the table.
• Support the editing and display of block and inline Katex formulas
• Supports mermaid graphic syntax.
• The file path link can be automatically reconstructed, and when a file or folder is renamed or moved, the local path of the links or images that the document depends on will be automatically changed.
• You can freely drag and adjust the order of document elements.
• Supports multi tab editing mode
• Support pasting HTML, plain text, and markdown code. When pasting HTML and markdown code, it can be configured to automatically download network images to the local machine and convert paths during pasting.

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The best photo editing apps for iPad

These are the best iPad photo editing apps

The iPad is a nearly perfect platform for photo editing. What started as a more consumer-focused product that emphasized content consumption has turned into a powerful tool for creators.

The recently announced iPad Pro debuted Apple's most powerful processor yet. It is a workhorse with as much brawn as most Macs. Even entry-level iPads have enough horsepower to tackle advanced photo editing.

These iPad photo editing apps are perfect for photo editing, and while they take advantage of the most recent iPad processors. Don't worry if you have an older iPad they still run well on older iPads, too.

Adobe Lightroom for mobile

Adobe offers two versions of Lightroom on the Mac: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Lightroom Classic. Lightroom Classic is a full-featured photo management and editing tool with Adobe's best editing features.

On the other hand, Adobe Lightroom focuses on a more mobile workflow, and its suite of tools on Mac and iPad is more limited. Still, it offers more tools than most image editors on the iPad and instantly syncs with the desktop version.

The most recent version of Lightroom for mobile has new AI tools like Generative Remove, whcich It removes objects and replaces them with AI-generated images that blend seamlessly into the photo.

AI is also used to enhance images and create background blur, perfect for images from mobile devices, where backgrounds are often in sharp detail.

A great tool for social media creators, Lightroom allows mobile users to export replay videos of an editing session. Photographers can post these to their social accounts as tutorials or demonstrations of their editing techniques.

Lightroom for mobile is free but limited in pro features until they are unlocked with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, available on the Adobe website .

Lightroom Mobile is available on the iPhone and iPad is sold on the App Store. Fees and subscription costs vary.

Adobe Photoshop for iPad

Adobe Photoshop for iPad is a powerful mobile image editing tool and a fantastic addition to the iPad ecosystem. It syncs with Adobe Creative Cloud for persistent editing across devices, yet still works as a capable stand-alone editor.

Photoshop for iPad has an interface similar to the desktop version but scaled down for the iPad. It has toolbars and layers and a selection of the most common image editing tools.

Despite the simplified interface, like the desktop version, powerful features are tucked away in every tool.In addition to typical tools, there are touch-based shortcuts to access layers, explore tool options, and even run shortcuts.

As a note, Photoshop Express, also available on mobile, is entirely different and is a poor chioce for photo editing.

Adobe Photoshop for iPad is free for users with a plan that includes Adobe Photoshop for Mac or Windows, and can be found on the App Store. As you'd expect, fees and subscription costs vary.

Apple Photos

For many users, the best iPad photo editor might be the built-in solution, Apple's Photos.

Thanks to the connection to iCloud , Photos on the iPad has access to all of a user's photo library, allowing for photo editing of any image taken on an iPhone or iPad or imported into Photos from a camera.

Photos isn't the most robust image editor; its functionality is dedicated to image storage and sharing. Still, a surprisingly powerful set of tools is available with a tap on the Edit button.

Users can try one-click adjustments with the Auto tool or choose from 17 tools, such as contrast, saturation, sharpness, and noise reduction. Photos has a selection of filters, though it is nowhere near as comprehensive as many tools designed for social media sharing.

It's even possible to draw annotations or effects on your images with the built-in Markup tools.

The best things about Apple Photos are that it's built into your iPad and the instant cross-device sharing that brings. Adjust an image on the iPad; that edit is available on the Mac through iCloud syncing.

There's even the ability to view and share images on Windows machines thanks to iCloud Photos, one of Apple's few Windows apps .

Photos for iPad is installed by default along with Apple's other core apps.

Capture One Mobile

Capture One Pro is an immensely powerful photo management and editing tool. It directly competes against Adobe Lightroom Classic, Adobe's "traditional" version of Lightroom, but is much more powerful than Lightroom.

Capture One was born as software for commercial studio photographers but over time the program became a powerful photo management and editing solution While it has a more complex interface than Lightroom, it provides a larger feature set of editing tools.

Capture One Mobile can be used as a stand-alone editing tool yet offers extensive tethering tools to move images from a shoot into Capture One Pro. Users can even directly control many brands of cameras for instant importing to the desktop app.

This tethering functionality is similar to the Multicam features added to Final Cut Pro for iPad 2. Images captured on the mobile app can be seamlessly integrated into Capture One Pro, eliminating the need for a card reader to transfer images.

Users can apply Quick Edits to imported images and batch-adjust them. More than a dozen tools are also available to adjust an image. Users of Capture One Pro can also transfer images using the cloud service, Airdrop or though direc connection to a camera.

Capture One Mobile is available with several subscription plans that include upgrades for the subscription term and is also available as a purchase of the current version that never expires but doesn't get access to new full versions of the program.

You can find more information on the Capture One ecosystem on their website . You can download Capture One for iPad on the App Store.

Affinity Photo for iPad

Affinity Photo is a beloved photo editor on the Mac (and Windows) and a genuine competitor to Photoshop for the average user. Affinity eschews the subscription model and has a one-time purchase model that is equal to around three months of Adobe's Photoshop subscription plan.

Serif, the company behind Affinity, was recently acquired by Canva, an online design powerhouse. In my coverage of that merger , I pointed out how the combined apps could be a dominant force in the design market.

You do not need to purchase the desktop version to use Affinity Photo for iPad. It can be purchased without a subscription and costs under $20, but it is included in the company's bundle of all three creative tools.

Affinity Photo for iPad is designed around the iPad's interface. All the controls have been designed for touch use, a Quick Menu provides access to a programmable selection of tools, and a compact view gives more space to the art and less to the interface.

It has powerful editing tools, the ability to import Photoshop's PSD files (including Smart Objects), make panoramas, create image masks, work with infinite layers, and more.

Affinity Photo for iPad works on older iPads, though Serif recommends an M1 iPad or later for the best performance. Even without an M1 iPad, Affinity Photo for iPad provides an impressive array of tools at a fair price.

More information on the Affinity tools are available on the Serif website . Affinity Photo is available on the App Store.

Darkroom bills itself as "The easiest and most powerful photo and video editor," which is hard to verify objectively. However, the tool has received an Apple Design Award, Best of the App Store award, and has been both App of the Day and Editor's Choice.

Darkroom has desktop, iPad, and iPhone versions, each with a unified interface. Switching between platforms is easy. The application is sleek, which means it's free of distracting user interface elements and allows for power without being overly complex.

One-click presets quickly improve images, but powerful edits are just a quick trip to the sidebar away.

Since Darkroom is a photo and video editor, you get two different tools, saving time and money to have two different apps for each media type.

Darkroom is free to use, but a Darkroom+ subscription unlocks the app's powerful functions. Subscriptions are available for $33 a year, but Darkroom+ can also be purchased for a one-time $75 price that is good for the app's lifetime.

More information on Darkroom is available on their website. Darkroom for iPad is downloadable from the App Store.

Which photo editor for iPad to choose?

Users of desktop photo apps with an iPad version should install the iPad versions, as they provide a unified photo editing experience. Installing the mobile version is a no-brainer if you subscribe to a creative suite like Adobe's.

There should be one perfect choice with so many excellent photo editors available. Why limit yourself? Every iPad photo app has a slightly different use case, and that's why many photographers have a quiver full of photo editing apps.

One powerful app wasn't mentioned: PHOTOMATOR - more of a photo developing app.  Photomator on iPad and iPhone is extremely powerful. Especially in the bigger iPad screen. The interface and quality of editing RAW and JPG is exceptional. Unfortunately Photomator doesn't have the mind share value of the apps mentioned in the article. Photomator is also on Mac and every bit as capable. Pixelmator is a light but solid photo editing app as well. It's available for iPadOS and iOS but in 2024 the interface is old and feels very much like a 'classic iOS' app. Meh! Pixelmator Pro is Mac only but very powerful. Really wish they'd debut an iPad version. Pixelmator Pro might not reach feature polarity with Affinity Photo and Adobe Photoshop but that's okay. Not everybody needs every last feature. Pixelmator Pro (Mac) is super efficient and makes great ease of use for subject detection and background removal. And includes video effects/editing on equal level as the photo features. Though I am a former Photoshop daily user, these days I'm heavy in Affinity Photo (iPad and Mac) and Pixelmator Pro (Mac) for editing. For photo developing I'm all in on Photomator on iPad, iPhone and Mac.

Luminar for iPad and Mac 

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Over the past decade, CRISPR has taken the biomedical world and life sciences by storm for its ability to easily and precisely edit DNA. Here, Stanford University bioengineer Stanley Qi explains how CRISPR works, why it’s such an important tool, and how it could be used in the future – including current developments in using CRISPR to edit the epigenome, which involves altering the chemistry of DNA instead of the DNA sequence itself.

“CRISPR is not merely a tool for research. It’s becoming a discipline, a driving force, and a promise that solves long-standing challenges from basic science, engineering, medicine, and the environment,” said Qi, an associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering and institute scholar at Sarafan ChEM-H . “Together, we can think innovatively about how to match needs with technologies to solve the most challenging problems.” 

What Qi discussed

(click the question to jump to the answer):

What is CRISPR

How does it work?

What are gene therapy and cell therapy, and how is CRISPR involved?

How does it differ from other gene-editing tools?

Why is it such a big deal?

How far has CRISPR technology come since it was created?

In 2019, Victoria Gray was the first person in the U.S. to receive CRISPR treatment for a genetic disease (sickle cell anemia). Now, CRISPR-based therapies are approved in the U.S. and the U.K. What is next?

Were you surprised when the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry went to CRISPR’s developers?

Besides treatment for diseases, what are other real-world applications for CRISPR technology?

What are your views on some of the ethical concerns surrounding CRISPR?

Your group demonstrated that it’s possible to shrink CRISPR. Why is this significant?

What is your lab working on in terms of epigenome editing?

Are there limitations to what CRISPR can do?

What do you think CRISPR is capable of doing in the future?

How far are we from actually achieving those idealistic future goals?

1. What is CRISPR?

The short answer: CRISPR is an immune system used by microbes to find and eliminate unwanted invaders. 

Qi: CRISPR stands for “clustered interspaced short palindromic repeats.” Biologists use the term to describe the “genetic appearance” of a system that was discovered in microbes – including bacteria and archaea – as early as 1987. For a long time, no one really understood what it did, but around 2005, researchers discovered CRISPR is an immune system. It’s used by microbes to help protect themselves from invading viruses. To stop the invaders, the microbes use CRISPR to recognize and eliminate specific trespassers.

Back to the list of questions

2. How does it work?

The short answer: When a virus or other invader enters a bacterial cell, the bacterium incorporates some of the trespasser’s DNA into its own genome so it can find and eliminate the virus during future infections. 

Qi: It’s similar to the human immune system. When a virus infects us, we generate an immune memory in the form of antibodies – lots of them. Then, when the same virus infects us again, these antibodies quickly recognize the invaders and eliminate them. 

When a virus infects a bacterial cell, CRISPR helps establish a memory – a genetic one. The bacterium takes a piece of the virus’s genome and inserts the DNA into its own genome. From that newly acquired DNA sequence, CRISPR creates a new “guide RNA,” a sequence that helps CRISPR find the invader via sequence complementarity (i.e., A binds to T and C binds to G). So, the next time when the virus infects that bacteria cell, the guide RNA rapidly recognizes the virus DNA sequence, binds to it, and destroys it.

3. What are gene therapy and cell therapy, and how is CRISPR involved?

The short answer: Gene therapy can mean using CRISPR as a macromolecule drug to either fix a mutated gene or regulate a defective gene to treat a disease. Cell therapy means using CRISPR to make your body’s cells attack toxic cells or regenerate beneficial cells.

Qi: Gene therapy can mean two things: One is to fix a mutated gene, and the other is to regulate a gene’s expression into protein products. Our current understanding of gene therapy is still rapidly advancing, and the challenge is managing therapy safely and cheaply. Furthermore, we’re only looking at the simplest genetic diseases. For example, sickle cell anemia is a disease we know a lot about, and it’s often caused by a single mutation. So, we can configure CRISPR to fix it. But many more diseases are caused by widespread mutations, multiple mutations, and even multiple genes. In the future, gene therapy could go beyond a single mutation, and I am optimistic that in the next decades, gene therapy will become a pillar of medicine.

Cell therapy is a little different. For example, when people try to treat leukemia, a type of white blood cell tumor, sometimes chemotherapy drugs can’t completely get rid of the tumor cells. In the past two decades, scientists have found that if they retrieve some of the patient’s T cells, which fight infections, these cells can be engineered as better fighters to recognize and eliminate tumorous cells. When the modified T cells are injected back into the patient, they can attack the tumors. However, cells are quite complicated. Sometimes, they go out of control when injected back into the patient, killing healthy cells along with the tumor cells. At other times, they may fail to work because they are suppressed by the tumor cells. CRISPR offers a powerful tool to enhance the efficacy and safety of these immune cells so that they are completely under our control for best clinical benefits.

4. How does it differ from other gene-editing tools?

The short answer: CRISPR is much easier to program than other tools. 

Qi: Before CRISPR, most gene-editing tools were a single protein. By changing the peptide sequence of these proteins, scientists could alter their targets. To change the target, you need to completely redesign the protein’s sequence and then test if it even works, which is tedious, unpredictable, and time-consuming. These gene-editing tools were theoretically interesting, but they were difficult to use for large-scale studies and therapeutics.

Compared to that, CRISPR is elegant because the target recognition sequence is mostly encoded within an RNA rather than a protein, and redesigning this sequence is one of the simplest things you can do in molecular biology. It makes genome editing similar to operating a GPS: If you want to go to destination A, you just type the address, and to change to destination B, you just enter the new location. So, this tool dramatically reduces the burdens, cost, timing, while increasing the precision and accuracy of a gene-editing system.

5. Why is it such a big deal?

The short answer: CRISPR can precisely modify a piece of DNA or its chemistry (so-called epigenetics) in the human body, making it a potential tool for clinical uses in the biomedical sciences. 

Qi: CRISPR is a molecule and tool desired by everyone who works in the life sciences, biomedical research, and clinical settings. Its high precision is unparalleled and enables many uses including gene therapy.

My dream has been to develop new biotechnologies and apply them to diseases without a cure. Genetic diseases make up a big part of this category. Traditional medicines – small molecule drugs, surgery, and other methods – don’t work for these types of diseases. But CRISPR molecules have become highly promising as treatments because they allow us to precisely modify a piece of DNA in the human body. This could lead not only to relief but also to a cure.

Indeed, recent FDA approval of the first CRISPR drug, Casgevy, in treating sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia speaks to its safety and potential for other diseases. Sickle cell anemia is a disease in which people have a mutation in their red blood cells. Normally, there’s no treatment other than frequent blood transfusions or bone marrow transplants from a matched donor, which are expensive and damaging to a patient’s overall health. Using CRISPR, it’s possible to perform a one-time treatment to permanently correct the mutation. There are more than 8,000 genetic diseases like that, which can be potentially considered.

6. How far has CRISPR technology come since it was created?

The short answer: In about a decade, scientists went from wondering if this technology would even work in human cells to getting the first CRISPR drug approved uses in the clinic.

Qi: In 2010, I was working on CRISPR as a bioengineering graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, under Adam Arkin, a synthetic biologist and bioengineer, and collaborated with Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist and structural biologist. In the early days, CRISPR’s practical usefulness was not very publicly recognized. At that time, many counterarguments said CRISPR was just a bacterial system and most of these simply don’t work in human cells – which, to be fair, is true. 

But after Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier published their seminal 2012 paper on Cas9 – one type of CRISPR that cuts DNA using a single protein and an engineered single guide RNA – the research and published papers grew exponentially. Firstly, because it’s a system that everyone in the life sciences wants. Secondly, using CRISPR is super easy, flexible, and robust. It’s not like other technologies that take multiple years and millions of dollars to set up – CRISPR only takes a couple of weeks and a bit more than a few hundred dollars to set up now.

A lot of researchers significantly contributed to the rapid development. For example, within three years following its initial demonstration, structural biologists solved the high-resolution, three-dimensional structure of what Cas9 and other CRISPR proteins look like. Bioinformaticians have revealed many new species of Cas molecules beyond Cas9, many of which have novel functions. Biochemists engineered CRISPR to understand how fast and tightly it binds to DNA. Bioengineers, including me, engineered the proteins to make them work more efficiently and more specifically so they can work better in the human body for gene therapies. Also, clinical researchers started to use the tool to address particular diseases. 

Furthermore, the applications of CRISPR went beyond gene editing. Epigenetic editing is an exciting development, although we still await clinical benefits. It was used for targeting the human 3-dimensional genome, visualizing the DNA dynamics, or even targeting another set of molecules, RNA, for gene regulation.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that, essentially, CRISPR has been tested as a potential treatment option for every disease that we have clear knowledge about. CRISPR can’t solve all of them, but because this tool is so powerful, easy to use, and so far-reaching, it has allowed everyone to combine their expertise with CRISPR.

7. In 2019, Victoria Gray was the first person in the U.S. to receive CRISPR treatment for a genetic disease (sickle cell anemia). Now, CRISPR-based therapies are approved in the U.S. and the U.K. What is next?

The short answer: This is very exciting. Future CRISPR drugs will address more incurable diseases, which provide a test case for CRISPR’s efficacy and safety in different organs and patients.

Qi : I’m super excited to see CRISPR becoming a drug to treat a disease as a one-time cure. When CRISPR first came out, there were concerns about whether these bacterial molecules could be used safely in humans and whether it was safe to cut and edit human DNA. While there are still questions regarding long-term effects (beyond the period of clinical trials in tested patients) it is very encouraging that CRISPR is safe and effective.

The next step is to expand the scope of CRISPR drugs. Medicine isn't made in one day. Different diseases are caused by different mechanisms. There are already more than dozens of CRISPR clinical trials for different diseases in the liver, immune cells, eyes, and muscles. Furthermore CRISPR epigenetic editing is expanding the scope of disease to treat more types of muscular dystrophy, retina disorders, and brain diseases.

8. Were you surprised when the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry went to CRISPR’s developers?

The short answer: Not at all. But I hope the award doesn’t lead people to think CRISPR research is finished – it’s still growing, and there’s much more to explore in basic research, medicine, and beyond. 

Qi: I’m not surprised at all. Even before 2020, researchers had been discussing when the Nobel Committee would recognize CRISPR. So, when it happened, I was super excited. 

Jennifer Doudna (University of California, Berkeley) and Emmanuelle Charpentier (Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens) received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry only seven years after CRISPR was first reported as a molecular system for modifying the human genome.

I hope that giving the Nobel Prize to CRISPR won’t give people the impression that the genome editing field is done. This is a field that’s still growing in every corner of life sciences. Besides being explored as medicine in humans, it is expanding its influence in plants, microbes, and difficult-to-engineer organisms such as fungi. There are so many questions – about how we can use CRISPR for safely controlling the genome, how to use it for novel and innovative research, and how to make it a clinical product – that still need to be explored.

These are exciting frontiers of further increasing the safety of CRISPR-based therapies and expanding the scope of diseases treatable by this technology.

9. Besides treatment for diseases, what are other real-world applications for CRISPR technology?

The short answer: Some other uses are diagnostics, manufacturing, sustainability, and ecological engineering.

Qi: CRISPR can be used for diagnostics. It has been developed as a way to sensitively detect pathogens in the environment that are affecting our bodies.

There are also opportunities in manufacturing, such as making products that we care about using organisms like yeast and bacteria. Imagine that we could use CRISPR to engineer new microbes that could boost production – like 10x more beer, for instance. And also, beer that tastes much better and can be catered to different people’s wants and needs.

Sustainability is also a big application for CRISPR via bioengineering. Creating sustainable, carbon-neutral methods of energy or food production is a challenge. Genome engineering may offer better manufacturing protocols through microbes that reduce greenhouse gases, plastic, and food waste. 

Finally, we get to ecological engineering. For example, people are trying to eliminate certain invading or pathogenic mosquito species using CRISPR, but in my opinion, its long-term safety and impact still need careful evaluation. Other people are trying to revive extinct species. Recently, scientists announced they were trying to revive a woolly mammoth that can live in the Arctic cold.

10. What are your views on some of the ethical concerns surrounding CRISPR?

The short answer: My research group often thinks about the ethics of CRISPR. Some ethically questionable areas are disease prevention and eliminating pesky species, and some definite unethical areas are enhancement and creating designer babies. 

Qi: The ethical side of CRISPR is something my research group thinks about every day. One of the fundamental principles of ethics is to do no harm. Sure, we want to do something great and helpful to people, but at the same time, we have to consider if we’re harming other people. Using that principle, we can consider a few cases. 

One example is a designer baby, which is a scary topic. That is regarded as unethical because this may create a new human species. When the germ cells – sperm and egg cells – are edited, this not only affects that single person, but also the children that person could have in the future.

Another concern is in the division of treatment, which has three categories: cure, prevention, and enhancement. Curing someone’s disease is great. Prevention, which means someone is at risk of developing a problem, is a gray area. If someone has a high chance of getting an infectious disease, should we use gene therapy to permanently modify their DNA to reduce their risk? That question really depends on if we have other options. The last category – enhancement – is likely unethical. People talk about the possibility of targeting a gene to grow more muscle or make people smarter or better looking. But if research goes into this category, only some people may be able to afford it. This could amplify the imbalance of socioeconomic status. Another facet to consider is medical necessity. Is the therapy really necessary, or are there other ways to solve the problem through currently available drugs, diet, exercise, etc.? 

Beyond medicine, some scientists may want to use CRISPR for ecological reasons, for example, eliminating mosquitoes. From my viewpoint, that’s controversial because I think every species exists for a reason. If we try to eliminate mosquitoes, we might have a chain reaction that affects other life forms in the environment and can be irreversible. I hope in the future we can make this technology reversible like installing a switch so that if we make something that turns out to be less than ideal, we still have some way to reset it.

11. Your group demonstrated that it’s possible to shrink CRISPR. Why is this significant?

The short answer: It’s tricky to deliver CRISPR molecules into cells. Shrinking the size of the molecule helps it easily traverse inside of cells and get to its DNA target. 

Qi: CRISPR is such a magic molecule, but that magic only works if CRISPR gets inside cells and touches the DNA. The question is obvious: How can we even make CRISPR get inside the cell?

Human cells are designed to resist any invading DNA. So the human body has many strategies to prevent foreign DNA from getting in. 

Many delivery methods scientists used have limited power. We can use retooled viruses to deliver clinical products into cells, but they have a small capacity – the Cas9 version of CRISPR usually doesn’t fit inside the virus. Therefore, the currently approved CRISPR drug requires isolating patient cells, modifying them, and putting them back in. This process is costly and slow. If we want CRISPR to become a broadly useful medicine, then we need to make the molecule as small as possible. 

That’s why we made this miniature CRISPR, which we call CasMINI , which is only half the size of Cas9. We also saw that it is easier to enter cells and works better than other CRISPR molecules because it can get inside more efficiently. This miniature CRISPR can revolutionize the way that we can perform editing in the body. Our hope is to address these technical barriers then test how miniature CRISPR can be delivered to different parts of the human body to treat various genetic diseases.

12. What is your lab working on in terms of epigenome editing?

The short answer: We’re trying to use CRISPR to control gene function rather than editing genes to treat diseases.

Qi: I’m excited about exploring how to treat diseases without modifying human DNA through epigenome editing. It’s a different way of thinking about gene therapy. Unlike gene editing, epigenome editing is reversible, safer, and promising for complex diseases that can not be easily targeted by gene editing.

To enable epigenome editing, we developed the first nuclease-deactivated dCas9 in living cells, to programmably target and control gene expression, without altering the DNA sequence. For example, if a person doesn’t have enough properly working proteins, we can use epigenome editing to increase the gene expression over a long term to make more proteins to compensate for this deficiency problem, thus restoring the function to normal in patients.

In other cases, someone may have a gene mutation that produces a toxic product, such as in many muscular dystrophies or neurological degenerative diseases. Rather than using CRISPR to modify DNA, we can use our epigenome editing technology to permanently silence the gene without modifying the DNA. I am excited to test this solution in the clinic as I believe this offers a safer strategy for treatment without altering DNA.

13. Are there limitations to what CRISPR can do?

The short answer: There are limitations to gene editing, but new technologies are trying to expand the power of CRISPR. 

Qi: One major limitation is we’ve been using it for only 10 years. Often, time is the best test of all technologies. Only by collecting data over enough time in all scenarios will we be able to understand everything about these technologies, like how safe they are over the long term. 

In testing in human subjects with patients, even though we didn’t see off-target effects or immune responses, there are still question marks. We still need to constantly improve our understanding, as well as CRISPR’s accuracy and precision in different human tissues and different patients, when treating a problem. 

Also, right now, CRISPR is mostly used as molecular scissors to cut DNA. But sometimes, the problem gene’s affected function isn’t caused by a DNA mutation. Sometimes, it’s a gene turning on or off abnormally that causes the problem. So in that case, CRISPR shouldn’t be used as molecular scissors to cut DNA, but rather as a switch to restore the gene to work properly. Epigenetic editing tools can well address such challenges. 

CRISPR is like a powerful hammer. But the question is: Where is the nail? What is the most suitable nail to work on? For example, as of today, we still don’t know for sure which gene causes Alzheimer’s disease in many patients. To use CRISPR, we need to know which gene to target and which cell is the destination. We also need to know when to perform the treatment – sometimes treatment can only be done in an early stage of a person’s life. 

Another big issue is the high costs associated with the current CRISPR medicine. How to reduce cost is a major question. I’m glad that there are active conversations between academia and industrial partners to have multiple experts in the same room to come up with the best solution.

14. What do you think CRISPR is capable of doing in the future?

The short answer: It could help improve the quality of life as we age, engineer useful organisms, and even serve as a universal vaccine against viruses. 

Qi: I’m excited by CRISPR possibly helping anti-aging, but less in the sense of making people live longer. No one can escape aging, and it’s a huge burden to our healthcare system and decreases the quality of life. My hope is that in the future, CRISPR isn’t just being used to save lives, but also to improve the quality of life when people age.

I also hope CRISPR can become a way to engineer a lot of useful life forms. For example, there are microbes that can capture solar energy and convert it to electricity, and maybe those could be used to produce sustainable energy. Additionally, we could engineer food that’s more nutritious, prevents obesity, and so on. 

Another application could be vaccines. Even now, infectious diseases, like COVID-19, have dramatically changed everyone’s lives, which is unbelievable. So another dream is to develop cheap and safe genetic vaccines to fight all viruses, since that’s their original role in bacteria. And maybe, in the future, we could receive a small dose of CRISPR that could completely kill any new virus. It’s not easy, but given that this genetic system was designed as an antiviral system, there’s a chance this could work. 

15. How far are we from actually achieving those idealistic future goals?

The short answer: We’re close to some goals but may be far from some other idealistic goals.

Qi: When it comes to CRISPR and achieving those big dreams we have for it, we're at different stages. For some goals, it might feel like we're just starting out, but for others, we're getting pretty close. For example, I'm really excited about how we're starting to use CRISPR in real-life treatments for diseases, such as sickle cell anemia. This is a big step forward! I am also very excited about CRISPR epigenetic editing, a way to turn genes on or off without changing DNA sequence, which is getting ready for its big moment in clinical trials.

The reason we’ve come this far is thanks to a lot of people who believe in the power of safely editing our genes to make us healthier and are working hard every day to make that a reality. It’s their passion and the demand for these solutions that keep pushing us forward. I’m optimistic that many of the things we’re dreaming about with CRISPR could become real, sooner rather than later.

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Tech founder claims he successfully slowed down his aging by editing his DNA

Neurotech founder bryan johnson underwent the procedure on an island off the coast of honduras.

The tech entrepreneur who once had his son’s plasma infused with his blood in an attempt to extend his own life now claims that he successfully slowed the aging process by undergoing an untested DNA editing procedure on a Honduran island, in September 2023.

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Bryan Johnson, the founder and CEO of the neurotechnology company Kernal, has gained increasing prominence due to his highly publicized efforts to live forever — or at the very least slow the aging process. He only eats between 4:30 and 11 a.m., consistently goes to bed at 8:30 p.m. and takes more than 100 pills each day.

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Johnson’s latest foray into anti-aging science took him to the Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras, where he received follistatin gene therapy in the form of two injections. The entrepreneur says that he spent $20,000 on reversible gene therapy developed by the method development company Minicircle.

“Humans currently have a max lifespan of roughly 120 years. However gene therapies have the potential to help break through that barrier,” Johnson wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Follistatin gene therapy ranks 7th among lifespan studies, extending mouse lifespan by over 30%.”

Johnson explained that he had previously considered gene therapy, but dismissed the idea due to safety concerns. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved DNA editing — which is why Johnson traveled to Roatan to receive two gene therapy injections.

“If a therapy caused, say, cancer in my body, there’d be nothing I could do to reverse the process,” Johnson explained in a video about the gene editing process. “What makes Minicircle therapy different is that it has a built-in kill switch. If my body reacts badly I can take the antibiotic tetracycline, instantly killing and deactivating the DNA molecules I’ve been injected with.”

Johnson claims that the gene editing injections, coupled with his other lifestyle choices, has slowed the speed of his aging to the point of only celebrating his birthday every 19 months.

“Sleep, diet, and exercise remain foundational,” he wrote on X. “These next-generation therapies further bolster our chances of being the first generation that has the choice of saying yes to continuous tomorrows.”

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