How to Ace Your First College Essay: Part 2
This article focuses on strategies for editing your college writing assignments.
By Ceanna Hayes Daniels — December 11, 2023
(This article focuses on strategies for editing your college writing assignments. For tips on how to brainstorm paper ideas and write your first draft, check out part one!)
After you've written the first draft of a college essay, two additional phases of the writing process remain: content edits and line edits. "Content edits" are revisions to the content of your paper — things like the clarity of your argument, the order in which you make your points, and so on — while "line edits" focus on small details, like word choice and punctuation. You'll be most effective as an editor if you take the time to analyze your paper's content and style separately, so don't give in to the temptation to merge the two stages together. Instead, use these tricks to give both phases the time and attention necessary to write a knock-out paper.
Content Edits
Set the Draft Aside and Come Back Later. It's an old trick, but a good one — sometimes all you need to catch a mistake is a bit of space and time. Wherever possible, try to allocate at least a day for your draft to sit untouched, another day to review and revise the material on a content level, and a final day to complete the "fine-tuning" work of line edits.
While writing your drafts early enough that you can set it aside for a few days before you begin editing is a great goal to have for your college papers, it may not always be a realistic goal, depending on your health, courseload, or work schedule. Leave yourself as much time for editing as you reasonably can, but don't beat yourself up if you sometimes have a few hours rather than a few days — just make the best use that you can of the time you have.
Don't Just Reread — Analyze. When you read through your early drafts, it can be easy to passively reread your work, call it good, and move forward. However, your draft will be much stronger if you are willing to analyze each your argument with a critical eye and revise them where necessary. To get a good sense of where your argument could be improved, ask yourself if the stages of your argument flow logically into one another, if there are any unstated assumptions in your argument, or if there are any places in the paper where a sentence or paragraph seems disconnected from the rest of the argument.
At this stage of the editing process, just focus on clarifying and strengthening your argument — leave minor adjustments, like word choice, for the next stage after you've finished the substantive work of content editing.
Try Reverse Outlining. It's all well and good for someone to tell you to revise your paper by analyzing the content of your argument, but what if you don't know where to start? If you don't know how to assess your argument, it can be useful to try "reverse outlining" your paper.
Reverse outlining is exactly what it sounds like; instead of starting with an outline and expanding on it to create a draft, you take an existing draft and synthesize it into an outline. The process is easy — just open a new document beside your draft, type out a short sentence summarizing the central argument of each paragraph, and step back to examine the results. You now have a succinct, easy-to-digest outline of your argument, which you can use to troubleshoot any issues you might have with your paper! This trick is especially helpful for assessing the structure of your argument, because reviewing the new outline quickly shows you points of repetition, missing assumptions, and more.
Sometimes, it can helpful to do a few rounds of reverse outlining and rewrite multiple drafts based on the results. Other times, just one round of edits with this trick will be enough to show you whether your argument makes sense as-is or needs some revision!
Talk It Through. One of the best ways to confirm that your argument makes sense is to talk it through with someone else. Find a friend who's also writing a paper, or a classmate working on the same assignment, and ask if they'd be interested in swapping helping each other out with revisions. You can also always set up an appointment with a tutor at your school's writing center for more specialized help!
As you talk through your argument, make a note of where your revision partner looks confused, requests clarification, or asks what the point of an argument is (usually phrased as, "okay, but so what?"). Be sure to also pay attention to the places where you provide additional context, expand on a point, or otherwise feel a need to add to what you've written. These are the points to focus on as you start editing your first draft and transform it into a new and improved paper.
Line Edits
Read it Aloud. As you wrap up content edits and move forward into line edits, try reading your paper aloud. Your ears will catch lengthy phrases that need to be cut down, awkward phrasing that should be rewritten, and typos or repeated words that your eyes missed in earlier stages of the editing process. Although this step can take a while for longer papers, it always repays the time you invest into it.
Try Cutting a Word from Each Sentence. You're likely to look for extraneous material to cut from your paper if you've gone over the word count, but you might feel like skipping the step if your paper is any shorter. However, one of the most effective ways to improve your writing is to try cutting a word from each sentence. This is an especially valuable trick for anyone who's considering majoring in journalism, where being able to synthesize an idea to its punchiest form is crucial. However, students of any major can also apply this skill to everyday projects, like summarizing class notes to prepare for exams, in addition to essays.
This practice helps you to weigh the value of each word, making you question whether an idea could be expressed more concisely, whether an adjective or adverb really improves the sentence, and whether certain phrases could be replaced by more descriptive words. It's particularly useful for catching instances of passive voice, as well, since sentences written in passive voice tend to be longer than their active counterparts. Over time, you'll learn to express yourself more directly and will be able to say more in fewer words.
Delete Contractions. It's generally wise to avoid informal language in academic papers, so unless your professor has specifically said students can use contractions in their papers, set aside a few minutes of your editing time to delete any contractions in the draft.
Review Punctuation, Fonts, and Spacing. Whether it's a missing comma or an incorrectly-sized margin, small mistakes add up quickly when you're being graded on adherence to Chicago or MLA. To keep yourself from losing points on minor formatting issues like these, set aside time to review the punctuation, fonts, and spacing throughout your essay before you print or submit the final draft — it only takes a few minutes and can make a world of difference to your final grade.
Last Tips
Sometimes, It's Best to Put down the Thesaurus. Some students fall into the trap of using unnecessarily complex phrasing or words in their papers, particularly during freshman year when there's high pressure to prove yourself as a new student. Although thesauruses can be valuable tools when used correctly, it's best to put the book down if you only picked it up to replace clear, simple words with a polysyllabic cacophony to seem "smarter" than you currently feel. Give yourself time to gather knowledge and experience — in a few years, you'll surprise yourself with just how much you've grown as a writer. In the meantime, focus on strong arguments rather than imposing vocabulary to convince your audience.
Use Office Hours Strategically. Signing up for a professor's office hours can be intimidating, particularly as a freshman, but it's important to remember that professors want to see their students succeed — they have office hours available specifically so that students can come ask questions and get the help they need to understand the subject and, if possible, excel at the course. No student should ever assume that they're unwelcome at office hours.
When you're writing a paper, office hours can be a fantastic resource. If you have any confusion about the prompt or syllabus, you can ask your professor directly. If you have questions about the best secondary sources to read to understand the topic, your professor will know enough about the subject to help you get started on research. If your professor has expressed willingness to offer feedback on students' drafts (while many don't, some do — it's best to read the syllabus rather than assume), then you may be able to get targeted insights that will help you to improve your paper significantly.
Always remember to be respectful of your professor's time in office hours by signing up for an available appointment, arriving a few minutes early, and preparing the questions you want to ask ahead of time — but make sure you do actually use office hours. That's what they're there for!
Ceanna Hayes Daniels
Ceanna Hayes Daniels is freelance writer and editor. In 2022, she graduated Hillsdale College summa cum laude with a degree in politics. In her free time, she continues to enjoy studying philosophy, political theory, and literature. She and her husband live in Michigan, where the two enjoy perusing bookstores together for new books and old records.
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