Editing Your Own Writing

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Introduction

Maybe you have been in this situation. Someone writes you a text, but what they said does not make sense or seems totally wrong. Possibly you can tell what they meant to say, but in its current wording, it is totally opposite to what they meant to say. We forgive them and ask them what they really meant, but sometimes errors in communication can cause big problems. On a wiki or web page, we may not have this opportunity to check what they meant. We have to go by what they actually wrote. This is why editing what you write is so important.

Writing is editing. No book or published article looks the same as when the author first wrote it. What it means is that when you see a piece of good writing, what you're actually seeing is a …show more content…

Read Finding Common Errors by Purdue's OWL. Designed for older kids, this article is so short and easy to read that you will have no problem with it. (Notice how these folks made their site CRAAP-y by providing the names and dates of the contributing authors in addition to telling you they're a university writing center? That's one reason they're the most-linked-to site on writing ever!)
Read 11 Tips for Editing Your Own Writing. This article explains why even grown-ups have a hard time editing their own writing… but then gives you 11 great instructions for doing it.
Read Self- and Peer-editing Checklist. This checklist is useful for making sure you've remembered to check all the basic stuff—both in your own writing, and in your collaborators'.
Read Rules from Grammar Bytes. This site explains some basic rules in a pretty humorous way. So if your teacher tells you to cut out the run-on sentences, you can come here to find out what a run-on sentence is, and how to fix it!
Read through your notes and identify six specific tips that you think will be most useful for you when it comes time to edit your own

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