Lesson 13: Revising Tips, continued yet again

Welcome back class. Hope that you were diligent and successful in revising your papers from the advise given previously. Today we are going to talk about revising writing for tone and conciseness.

After the content and organization of your paper is up to par, tone is the next thing to worry about. This part has a lot to do with audience awareness. Depending on who may be reading your writing, you will want to use different types of tones. Academic papers generally need to have a professional tone. Depending on teacher preferences, you may not want to use contractions, first person (the dreaded "I"), second person (the almost as equally dreaded "You"), and so on. And it's pretty rare that you'll ever use slang (unless you're writing a paper on slang). So check your tone to make sure it fits your audience and purpose.

With conciseness, you want to go over your paper and make sure that you say what you want to say with as few words (or sentences, or paragraphs, or pages) as possible. Eliminate any "fluff." You know what I'm talking about; writing something just to fill page or word requirements. If you have any of this in your paper, cut it out, and write something that will actually add to your thesis. Now, don't get me wrong; concise doesn't necessarily mean short. It has nothing to do with length, but rather content. It all goes back to "content is king."

Well, if you have followed all these steps in revising your paper, you're well on your way to producing a great piece of writing! Note how I said well on your way. Depending on how good your first draft is, you may need to go through all of these steps several times before you have your finished product. Don't worry. Even though all this may seem overwhelming, you can do it; just follow these simple steps when revising: content, organization, tone, and conciseness. Writing isn't what Calvin, the boy in the cartoon above, says it is.