Brief Revision Overview

A (Very) Brief Overview of Revision[1]

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True, effective revision mostly concerns itself with global concerns rather than local concerns. This means that revision (which literally means “to see again”) focuses on the “global” concerns of a document (i.e., the overall argument, overall reasoning, transitions between ideas, coherence to conventions such as the IMRaD format, and so on). Editing, on the other hand, concerns itself with “local” concerns (i.e., issues of grammar, mechanics, style, format, and so on). Both are important components of writing, but today we concern ourselves with revision.

Types and Levels of Revision Operations

	Add	Subtract	Substitute	Transpose
Word
Sentence
Paragraph
Idea/Chunk
Topic

Motivations for Revision

Improve precision/accuracy

Improve clarity

Improve argument/persuasion

Incorporate new information

Incorporate new ideas; discard or revise old ideas

Change interpretation of existing information

Address new audience or new understanding of existing audience

Meet new purpose or changed sense of purpose

Convey a different persona or voice

Achieve an aesthetic effect

Match conventions of target discourse

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[1] Based on original document created by Doug Hesse