Revising

Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook

Paragraphing | Voice
Sentence Variety | Reading Aloud
Verb Errors | Comma Usage
Document Design

While many academic essays have paragraphs between five and seven sentences long, this is not a hard-and-fast rule to follow.

Paragraphs, in fact, can be of any length depending on the material and the effect you as the writer want to create.

Remember that paragraph breaks help to order and structure your material; in other words, paragraph breaks aid the reader in moving through your essay.

You should be conscious of when and why you break for paragraphs. Don't simply count sentences to make paragraph breaks.

Please use your Brief Penguin Handbook password to access practice materials at:

First, "voice" can refer to the relationships between subjects and verbs in sentences.

• Generally speaking, when subjects are followed by their verbs, writers are using the active voice.
  
• And when verbs are followed by their subjects, writers are using the passive voice.
  

While both "voices" have their place depending on the writing situation, many inexperienced writers overuse the passive voice.

Second, "voice" can refer to point of view-first, second, or third person.

While all points of view or "voices" also have their place depending on the writing situation, many inexperienced writers constantly shift or change point of view, making their essays difficult to follow.

To clarify voice, writers should try to have a dominant voice in both respects-one that is generally active and dominated by one point of view (usually third person).

Please use your Brief Penguin Handbook password to access practice materials at:

As they try to make their writing safe from the teacher's editing pen, many inexperienced writers choose to write short, simple sentence structures that have little to no sentence variety.

While short and simple sentence structures can be effective in some writing situations, overuse of such structures leads to flat, stunted, and often-incoherent writing.

Therefore, writers should try to vary their sentence structures.

Not only does sentence variety better approximate verbal discourse, but it also improves both the paragraph that contains it and the overall coherence of an essay.

While writers can, at the extreme, put too much sentence variety into an essay, this is rarely the case.

As you write, consider the way that you begin and end sentences, the length of your sentences, and the voice (passive or active) that you are using to structure your sentences.

Please use your Brief Penguin Handbook password to access practice materials at:

For whatever reason, many of these writers do not take advantage of reading and listening to their own writing and the writing of others.

And nowhere else in the writing process is reading aloud more important than in the revising stage.

By this point, the writer has prewritten, planned, and written an initial draft-a substantial investment.

Now that the writer's ideas have been organized into an essay-in-progress, it is time for the writer to hear what he or she has said on paper.

Many writers who read their own work out loud or, better yet, have their work read aloud to them, find this revising strategy to be the most beneficial in the process of making revisions to a draft.

Please use your Brief Penguin Handbook password to access practice materials:

However, understanding and being able to use all the verb tenses and forms are certainly not easy tasks, even for the most experienced writers.

It is important for you to review and practice verb use in your own writing.

As you proofread your writing for verb errors, you should have two goals:

1) determine the dominant verb tense of the essay
2) and make sure that your verbs fit with the dominant tense, with other verbs in the sentence, and with their subjects.

Please use your Brief Penguin Handbook password to access practice materials:

It is important for you to review and practice comma use in your own writing.

Some elements of document design may seem simple, such as double-spacing the essay text and using sub-headings before key paragraphs; however, these seemingly simple items may have a dramatic impact on a reader's ability to move through the text.

By paying attention to the essay's actual appearance on the printed page (or on the Web), a writer also imparts a welcome sense of professionalism and "polish" to the end product of the writing process.