General Revision Tips

1. Read you paper out loud to yourself. Reading your paper out loud will help you to hear the places where your writing gets confusing or awkward. It may even help you fix those spots as you speak your way into the correct word or phrase.
2. Revise from the printed copy when possible. Some studies have shown that we read differently on the computer screen than from printed material. Furthermore, when using a printed copy, you can see the entire page as opposed to the section that you can see on a word processor.

The following questions are from Erika Lindemann's A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers.

Subject, Audience, Purpose

1. What's the most important thing I want to say about my subject?
2. Who am I writing this paper for? What would my reader want to know about the subject? What does my reader already know about it?
3. What do I think the subject is worth writing about? Will my reader think the paper was worth reading?
4. What verb explains what I'm trying to do in this paper (tell a story, compare X and Y, describe Z)
5. Does my first paragraph answer questions 1-4? If not, why not?

Organization

1. How many specific points did I make about my subject? Did I overlap or repeat any points? Did I leave any points out or add some that aren't relevant to the main idea?
2. How many paragraphs did I use to talk about each point?
3. Why did I talk about them in this order? Should the order be changed?
4. How did I get from one point to the next? What signposts did I give the reader?

Paragraphing (Ask these questions of every paragraph)

1. What job is this paragraph supposed to do? How does it relate to the paragraph before and after it?
2. What's the topic idea? Will my reader have trouble finding it?
3. How many sentences did it take to develop the topic ideas? Can I substitute better examples, reasons, or details?
4. How ell does the paragraph hold together? How many levels of generality does it have? Are the sentences different lengths and types? Do I need transitions? When I read the paragraph out loud, did it flow smoothly?

Sentences (Ask these questions of every sentence)

1. Which sentences in my paper do I like the most? The least?
2. Can my reader "see" what I'm saying? What words could I substitute for people, things, this/that, aspect, and so forth?
3. Can I combine this sentence with another one?
4. Can I add adjectives and adverbs or find a more lively verb?

Things to Check Last

1. How does my paper end? Did I keep the promises I made to my reader at the beginning of the paper?
2. When I read the assignment again, did I miss anything?
3. What did I like best about this paper? What do I need to work on in the next paper?