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Revising Essays:

Revising Essays:. You Can Actually Do It Yourself. Revision Tool: STAR. S ubstitute T ake stuff out A dd stuff R e-arrange. Ratiocination. Ratiocination usually means to “reason with a process.” Use this method to edit writing.

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Revising Essays:

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  1. Revising Essays: You Can Actually Do It Yourself

  2. Revision Tool: STAR • Substitute • Take stuff out • Add stuff • Re-arrange

  3. Ratiocination • Ratiocination usually means to “reason with a process.” Use this method to • edit writing. • It really works best if you have 5 different colors of pen or pencil.

  4. Color #1— “To be or not to be?” When writing, most often the answer to that question is “not to be.” It is nobler in the mind to figure out more active verbs. Using a colored pen or pencil, circle every form of the verb “to be” in the paper. When finished, write the number of “to be” verbs at the top of the paper. When you revise, try as much as possible to cut the number of “to be” verbs in half. Reminder—“to be” verbs include (but are not limited to): • be being been • am are was • were is

  5. Colors #2 and 3— • A good writer uses a variety of sentence structures. Using the first color, highlight or underline the first sentence of the paper. Using the second color, highlight or underline the second sentence on the paper. Continue highlighting the rest of the paper, alternating these two colors. • Ask yourself these questions: • Are all sentences short? • Is there variety in sentence length? • Do you see patterns? • Are they complete sentences?

  6. Color #4— • This step is designed to help you change the beginnings of your sentences. Box the first word of each sentence. Do you notice a pattern? Are you beginning too many sentences the same way? Look at adding variety to the beginning of your sentences.

  7. Color #5— • Let’s get rid of “banned words.” Mark these words in the fifth color— very got nice a lot bad thing good so stuff then (when it starts a sentence) awesome wonderful • Try to use more vivid words in their place. These words are overused and have lost their punch. Note: if you are using “so” at the beginning of a sentence, chances are that it is working as a transition word and you might not need to change it.

  8. Peer Editing: Sometimes a Little Help is Good

  9. Pronouns • In a formal essay, there should be no first person or second person pronouns unless they are directly quoted from one of your sources, which means they must be within quotation marks with the in-text citation.

  10. Pronouns Continued… • Below is a list of first and second person pronouns. Please highlight ANY of these words that you see in your peer's essay. • First Person Pronouns (refer to the speaker): I Me My Myself Mine Our We Ours Ourselves Us • Second Person Pronouns: You Your Yours Yourself

  11. Contractions • In a formal essay, there should be no contractions of words. A contraction is a shortened form of a word or group of words, with the missing letters usually marked by an apostrophe. There are hundreds of contraction words in the English language (a few are listed below as examples). Please circle ANY word with an apostrophe in your peer's essay.

  12. Contractions Continued • A few examples of contractions: I'll I'm I've He'll She'll They're You're It's We'd Won't Can't Don't Isn't Haven't Weren't Doesn't Should've We're Hadn't • Note: Some words are also made possessive by adding an apostrophe, but it will be up to the writer of the paper to determine the usage and make corrections if necessary.

  13. Works Cited Page • Pagination (author's last name and the last page of the paper) • Works Cited - Centered, At Top of Page, No Bold, Not Underlined/Italicized, No Quotes Around It • Unnumbered Entries (and NO Bullets) • Alphabetized Entries • Reverse/Hanging Indentation Note: Must have more than URL for websites

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