ENTC 3030

REVISING FOR ORGANZIATION & STYLE

Revising is part of writing.• To achieve the high level of organization and

clarity necessary for your writing to succeed, you need to revise your work.

Once writing goes out for delivery, the writer no longer controls the message.• Your written thoughts are available for

unlimited close analysis.

Good writing can reduce great volumes of descriptive and analytical detail to refined, closely reasoned arguments. • The finished document must be clear,

accurate, and consistent. • You won’t be personally present to fill in gaps or

correct errors and inconsistencies.

When revising, try to improve the substance, organization, and clarity of your prose. • Approach this phase with an open mind.

Here are some things to consider:• Organization.

• Can you reorganize the draft in ways that will make its structure more closely reflect your goals and the needs and interests of your readers?

• Clarity. • Will adding, deleting, or rewriting material

noticeably strengthen its logic, coherence, and flow for readers?

• Accuracy.• Is the prose detail sufficiently accurate and

complete to support your claims?

• Economy. • Can you condense or eliminate wordy paragraphs

or sentences?

Try to gain perspective on your work by setting your outlines and drafts aside for a time.

• Ask for input from colleagues and supervisors.

• If you have been immersed in your project, you may overlook obvious gaps in your writing.

You tend to read in missing material.

• Readers’ questions and criticisms will let you know whether you’re communicating with your audience.

• Don’t be defensive; you don’t have to accept every recommendation.

Organization First, Then Style

The distinction between organization and style is a matter of emphasis, because effective organization is good style. • Organizational revision encompasses a larger

scale of activities.

You add, delete, or rearrange content to improve its logic and focus. • This process will lead naturally into reworking

individual sentences and rephrasing for greater impact on your audience.

You start out trying to make the draft reflect more accurately your aim and writing strategy and you work your way into reviewing the draft for clarity, word choice, and economy.• Manuscripts are most effectively revised and

prepared in a certain order.

As you work on getting your coverage and organization right, try to develop clearer paragraphs and sentences. • The manuscript also needs to be edited for

grammar, punctuation, and mechanics, as well as proofread for various inconsistencies and omissions.

Finally, it must be produced for distribution, often to requirements set down by professional societies or agencies.

When revising, first read the draft and circle material that you may want to relocate or delete.

• Jot notes in the margins, but don’t start rearranging or cutting sections until you have reviewed the whole manuscript.

• Once you have familiarized yourself with the draft, then study your original outline to see if your manuscript meets your expectations.

Here are some questions the reviser should ask:• What results do I want from circulating the

document? • What claims are you making?

• What criteria have you set for achieving your claims?

• What do you want your readers to do after reading the document?

• Does your document make this response clear?

• Will my document work for the audience I am trying to reach? • Is the organization appropriate for your readers?

• Have you thought carefully about material they need in your document to reach their goals?

• Is the level of your material (including your graphics) appropriate for the audience?

• Are the aims of my document clear? • Does your introduction contain your document’s

aim and problem statement?

• Have you stated the problem clearly?

• Keep in mind that your problem statement may not become clear until you have worked it over in draft and can see how the criteria and evidence have lined up.

If you decide that you want to reorganize your document, consider revising your outline to establish a new plan. • Then cut-and-paste sections in the new

sequence, using a photocopy or duplicate word-processing file, so that you can retreat to the original version if the rearranged draft doesn’t come out right.

Remember that once you have cut and rearranged the draft, you will probably have to write new transitions.

Tightening the Organization of Your Draft

Much revision is devoted to reorganizing and developing material. • For example, your theoretical section may

belong not after your introduction but after the discussion of your experimental results.

You may have given an account of your methodology in the results section of your report and want to shift this preliminary material back to its own section.

You may want to give a more detailed account of the problem you are addressing.

You may have buried important recommendations In back sections, where the managerial reader will have trouble finding them. • These and similar problems would require you to

rearrange considerable amounts of material.

You often need to develop material that has not been smoothly or logically presented in the draft. • Revising is partly a matter of rearranging

sections to 1)Tailor the detail to specific aims and audiences,

2) Improve logical development of the material,

3)Add or delete detail for the sake of argument, or

4)Highlight important material.

Reorganizing for Greater Audience Impact

To reorganize, work with an outline, which you can use as a plan for rearranging or deleting. • In the revised organization, the writers reflect

a pragmatic order of importance that will appeal to decision makers.

This kind of large-scale revamping and condensation of draft documents may be worked out first in an outline. • Once you have the basic structure

determined, you can review and revise with other goals in mind.

Making Fragmentary Prose Coherent

Be sure you convert your outline to prose. • A frequent problem in draft technical

documents is that sections of the draft may still read as though they had been lifted from an outline. • The result may be an underdeveloped and poorly

focused passage.

Your paragraphs should have clear topic sentences.

• The remaining detail should then be subordinated to the main topic.

• These measures will help develop the logical flow and coherence of your material.

Expanding tbe Draft in Order to Clarify Your Arguments

Sometimes draft material needs to be expanded in order to show steps in logic or to provide clarifying detail.

• Draft sentences may be overloaded with topics that need to be developed more gradually.

Arranging Material to Frame Discussions More Effectively

The management of detail is a major problem in nearly all scientific and technical prose. • Not only are there immense quantities of

physical detail, but the detail is also often repetitive. • When revising, make use of tables and charts to

organize and condense information so that repetitive details don’t obscure your discussion.

Deleting Detail That Does Not Advance the Discussion

Be prepared during revision to cut the many digressions that typically evolve during drafting. • Some of these digressions may run to several

paragraphs. • Does the detail truly support your argument?

You might find that some of your information can be deleted or moved to another part of your document.

Highlighting Material That Traces Your Argument

Highlighting and subordinating enhance your organization and should be considered at the revising stage.

Several common strategies help improve the focus and clarity of your draft.• Repeating major ideas or themes.

• Repetition, used sparingly, can help maintain the focus of your work.

You can restate a key idea at the beginning of one or two middle sections of the document and again in the conclusion.

Using headings and subheadings. • Part of your revising effort should be given to

rephrasing headings and subheadings to make them more specific and adding new ones when they will help organize your material. • These conventional but often underused aids

signal the next topic and help the reader assess the logic and coherence of the material.

They announce shifts in the discussion, supply transitions between sections, and together provide an outline. • Your system of headings and subheadings

should draw directly from your original rough outline.

Using graphics. • The revising stage is a very good time to

review your need for graphics. • Graphics are the most potent techniques for

emphasis.

They may be used to highlight important subject matter, condense repetitive prose, and delineate concepts too complex to treat in prose. • The simple drawing can clarify complex

relationships, emphasize key concepts, and communicate more rapidly than prose.

Drawing attention to parallelism. • Itemizing and enumerating are common

techniques for creating emphasis by drawing out the parallelism among concepts. • As you revise, consider adding these formatting

devices for strategic emphasis.

Revising for Style

As you work over your manuscript, you will inevitably find paragraphs, sentences, and words that need stylistic improvement. • Good style means economy and clarity.

• It does not seek strict uniformity in prose but does demand vigorous expression.

Clarity governs these choices throughout the document:• Paragraphs.

• At the paragraph level, clarity refers to unity and coherence, normally achieved by keeping sentences on topic and by linking them together with key words and transitions.

• Sentences. • Clear sentences generally develop from balanced

elements that are concise, specific, and directly worded.

• Words. • Clarity of word choice means appropriate and

accurate word usage.

From General to Specific

As you rework the organization and then style of your document, you’re moving from general to specific parts of your document. • Starting with the big picture means that you

will clarify your aims, refine your organization, and make necessary changes in your coverage.

These alterations in turn will determine many smaller revisions as you analyze your sentences for structure and word choice.• Before you’re finished, however, you need to

think about illustrations.

Graphics, usually labeled as figures or tables, can be as important as prose. • They both enhance and summarize

information. • As you draft any document, you need to think

about the visual part of your presentation.