adminAccording to Truman Capote, “The greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the music the words make.” As you edit the language of your essay, you are trying to make music out of the words. In this step the content of your essay should be solid. If the idea itself needs discarding, you should not be tweaking the language, it would be a waste of time working on transitions if the organisation and structure of your essay were in need of repair. Hence editing the language of your essay comes last. Here you are putting polish on a shoe that has already been sewn.
Editing the language can be tedious, but it is essential. You have got to proofread your essays dozens of times to catch all the rough spots and language errors. As you proofread you will be checking for misspellings, poor mechanics, bad grammar, awkward word flow and numerous other linguistic details that you can improve. Proofreading the language may take hours as you attempt to polish your language to the point that it is pleasing to read and has literary style.
Give your eyes rest
The more you read your essay, the more blind you become to it. Soon you stop reading the words on the page and only begin reading what is in your mind, which you falsely transpose onto the page. The actual letters could be Hebrew, or Greek, for all it matters at that point.
Don’t keep reading hour after hour until your mind registers the entire text at a glance, without seeing the details. What you must do is rest your eyes; take a break. Give yourself a day or two between revisions. (This is why you should not put off your assignments.)
When you come back to your essay with fresh eyes and a renewed perspective, you will see with added clarity all the rough phrasings and strange ideas that your eyes once glided over.
Know what to look for
You can read your essay a thousand times over, but if you don’t know what you are looking for, you will probably miss all the errors you are attempting to find. If you are going to work hard, make sure you are putting all your energy to a productive use. Know what to look for when you proofread.
Don’t plagiarise
You might want to ask a friend to read over your essay and give suggestions for change. This is usually advantageous. Some students, however, perhaps feeling pressure to bring their language level up to a more fluent, “A” level, might ask their friends to go beyond a few simple suggestions and instead to heavily edit or rewrite the language of their paper.
While it is generally okay for another to get some feedback from others on ideas and language, your friend or family member cannot take upon the role of an editor, changing your sentences and thoughts to reflect a linguistic and analytical level that is not yours and which is beyond your ability.
Passing off another’s language as your own — even if the ideas remain original to your own mind — is considered plagiarism. Your work must be your own, and that includes the language and style, not just content.
Use topic sentences
Few techniques add more clarity to your writing than well-formed topic sentences. Topic sentences usually appear at or near the beginning of each paragraph and tell the reader what the topic of the paragraph will be. Using topic sentences to “signpost” your meaning will orient the reader and help him or her follow comfortably along your path of thought.
You will discover that when a writer uses topic sentences, you can skim the entire essay and still understand the main points.
Make clear transitions
Transitions act as bridges between your paragraphs. Since each paragraph offers a distinct thought, you need to connect these two distinct thoughts in some logical way for the reader. The transitions supply the logic of how two paragraphs connect, how one idea leads to the next, or how the two are related.
Don’t make the reader guess how one paragraph relates to the other. The following are some common patterns for transitions:
Not only is vegetarianism unhealthy for the human body, vegetarianism also creates an excess of pesticides in the environment. (Transitioning from health hazards to environmental hazards.)
In addition to problems of obesity, today’s youth also suffer from increasing amounts of psychological stress. (Transitioning from obesity to psychological stress.)
Besides violating the right to privacy, the microchip also puts children at danger in the even of information-hacking. (Transitioning from privacy to information-hacking.)
Omit needless words
“Omit needless words!” “Omit needless words!” This was the constant advice, says E.B. White, of his former professor, William Strunk. White says Strunk would occasionally grab a student by the collar and shout this phrase several times, but then be almost restricted from elaborating more for fear of violating the very principle he was teaching.
Omit needless words, write with concision, make your sentences succinct, cut out the fat, remove the deadwood, make every word pull its own weight —these common phrases are all intended to convince students to streamline their prose with more efficiency and power by removing unnecessary words.
In Strunk’s own words, “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
In other words, if you bought a new car and looked under the bonnet, you would be appalled to see unnecessary, functionless parts. Similarly in an essay, all sentences and paragraphs must have an essential function and purpose.
Needless Words: A good basketball player is not necessarily one who is tall and dominating on the floor, or who has more height than the other players, but rather one who is keen enough to perceive strengths and weaknesses on the court, can see mismatches, liabilities, weak spots, and knows as well how to capitalise on his or her own strengths, be they speed, quickness, or explosive driving power.
Concise: A good basketball player is not necessarily one who is tall and dominating, but rather one who can perceive strengths and weaknesses on the court, can see mismatches, liabilities, weak spots, and knows as well how to capitalise on his or her own strengths, be they speed, quickness, or explosive driving power.
Super Concise: A good basketball player needs prudence more than height.
Establish emphasis
Subordination and co-ordination allow you to emphasise different parts of the sentence, so that the more important phrase is clear. Choosing between subordinate or co-ordinate clauses alerts you to the hierarchical relationships between information in your sentences and allows you to stress or emphasise certain ideas more than others.
Co-ordination involves combining clauses in a way that puts them on equal footing, where neither clause is more emphasised than the other. Co-ordinate clauses are joined with one of the seven co-ordinating conjunctions — and, but, or, for, so, nor, yet. On the other hand, subordination (like it’s root, subordinate) involves designating one clause to be more important than the other. Subordinate clauses usually begin with although, while, or because.
Use Rhythm
If you really want to get fancy with emphasis, you can experiment with periodic and cumulative sentences. Periodic and cumulative sentences are two advanced options for creating a strong sense of rhythm and emphasis in your sentence.
The periodic sentence is one in which the main clause is considerably delayed, whereas the cumulative sentence opens quickly with the main clause, and then adds on multiple non-restrictive clauses after it.
Be straightforward
Beyond any of the above techniques, you can increase the clarity of your writing by practicing a general straightforwardness in the expression of your ideas. Look over your sentences and ask yourself whether they communicate their ideas in the clearest way possible. —
www1.aucegypt.edu/academic/writers.
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