4 Revise

Before you leave your home, you check yourself in the mirror to ensure there’s no spinach in your teeth, or a  wardrobe malfunction.  It’s the cross check on a client’s hair.  Revising your communication is no different.  It will be someone’s first impression of you.  Complete that cross check before sending it out.

There are three parts to revision and it is important you don’t try to fix everything in one review.  Just like a two-in-one shampoo isn’t the best treatment for hair, you need to take your time with each stage or you will miss something.

If possible, take a break between writing and revising.  It’s also valuable to ask for help and have another person look something over.  When you have crafted an item, it can be difficult to catch any areas that may not be clear because you know the connections in your head already.  Your brain’s job is to make sense of the world for your and it recognizes what you meant, or what word should be there, and leads you along without a problem because that’s the job.  When proofreading, you need to re-train the brain for a different job.  You’ll find some tips here to help you and your brain.

Revision involves checking the content, structure, and accuracy of your work.  You can use the acronym CUT: Content, Unity, correcT.

Content

Review your material and check for the content: purpose statement, main points, support, transitions, and conclusions.  Check that there is enough information and that it is in the best order for your audience.  Support for your purpose, theme or thesis, is like a stool you sit upon: a one or two legged stool is not as sturdy as a stool with three or four legs.  Each main point should be distinct from the others, it must be significant to the purpose, and should have enough support itself to be a main point.  This is a concept check.

Unity

Review your paragraphs and ensure there is one main idea in each.  Ensure there is a clear topic sentence, and that the information in the paragraph relates specifically to the topic sentence of that paragraph.  If it doesn’t relate, cut it.  If it needs rewording to make the connection to the paragraph topic clearer, then reword it.  This step checks your information is united.

correcT

Your last step is to review sentence structure, word choice, spelling, and punctuation.  Make sure you follow the Standard English rules so what you write or say is what the audience reads or hears.

Use Spell-Check and all resources you can.  Ask another person to review the work as well: it is difficult to catch mistakes when you are the person who wrote them.  You can also read word-by-word starting at the right side of the page rather than the left.  This stops the brain from making sense of what you see so you see what is actually there.

Check that commas are used correctly and don’t create comma splices.  Remove excess punctuation (watch the !!! as it can be unprofessional).

If you are using outside information in your material, there should be a check on your incorporation of the information.  Double check that quotations are the same as the original with ” ” around

the passage.  Check your documentation where you use external proof and ideas, and make sure that in-text documentation matches up with the References entries at the end of your piece.  If you have images in your material, make sure you have provided that documentation as well.  IEEE standards are followed in the Trade’s professions and it is your responsibility to follow those standards (Chapter 6: Information Literacy).

This final check ensures your information and writing is correcT.