Priorities
- Revision Strategies: HOCs and LOCs (Duke): You have only so much time to revise your paper before you hand it in: what should you focus on? This detailed checklist from the Writing Studio helps you distinguish between higher and lower order concerns.
- Getting Feedback (UNC): You've done all you can on your own: now what? This handout suggests reasons and ways to solicit feedback from others on your writing.
- Providing Feedback (Duke): Your friend has done all s/he can on her own: now what? This handout suggests reasons and ways to provide feedback to others on their writing.
- Reading Aloud (Duke): Reading papers aloud is a very simple but powerful revision strategy. This handout provides tips for using reading aloud to help with revision.
Organization
- Finding your Flow with Connective Organization (Duke): Putting a finger on what exactly "flow" is can be surprisingly difficult. The highest-order influence on flow is often hidden in plain sight--in how your thoughts around a topic are organized. This handout helps you take a look at organization by understanding principles of flow and assessing your own paper.
- Reverse Outlining (Duke): One of the Writing Studio's most frequently recommended methods for evaluating the organization of papers, reverse outlining allows you to take a step back and evaluate "the big picture" of your argument.
- Roadmaps (Duke): This handout discusses tips for providing clear signals and signposts to readers as you guide them through your argument.
- Organization (UNC): Learn strategies for successfully organizing (and reorganizing) your essays, from reverse outlining, sectioning, and visualization to avoiding common pitfalls such as plot summary, generalization, and competing ideas.
Revising for Style
- Improving Your Writing Style (UNC): This handout covers ways to improve your writing style by avoiding wordiness, weak verbs, and "ostentatious erudition' (writing to impress).
- Clarity and Conciseness (Duke): This handout outlines practical methods for eliminating unnecessary words and phrases from sentences and choosing the most straightforward verb forms.
- Cohesion and Coherence (Duke): Moving from the sentence level to paragraphs, this handout discusses practical ways to get that elusive thing: flow.
- Using "I" in Academic Writing (Duke): This handout guides readers through the benefits and pitfalls of using the first-person pronouns I and we in academic writing.