When we decide to revise an essay, the first step is to proof-read it and correct mistakes. But that's only the first step. Revision should be a much larger process, a process of looking at your essay as a whole. You need to consider a variety of elements: information; audience; form; structure; development; style; and voice.

Below are some questions and suggestions designed to help you look at your essay from both a micro and macro standpoint; use them in conjunction with section 3 of the Bedford Handbook, which focuses on revision. Don't forget that really great essays often go through several incarnations -- they are revised not once, sometimes not twice, but many times. And the final product may look very different from the original version.

Questions for Revision

1. Does your introduction announce your thesis or point toward it in some way?
   
2. Is your thesis clear, interesting, and well-written? Do you prove it?
   
3. Can you state the main point or identify the most important image in each paragraph?
   
4. Does the main point of each paragraph help support and advance the thesis?
   
5. Are the paragraphs adequately developed? Are they coherent and cohesive?
   
6. Are the transitions between paragraphs fluid, in terms of prose and content?
   
7. Does the main point of each new paragraph move beyond the main point of the one before? In other words, does your argument/analysis develop logically and clearly throughout the paper? Would it be better if you reorganized the flow of information?
   
8. Do you use any deliberate strategies of development in your essay, on the paragraph level or on a larger scale? Are they used effectively and appropriately?
   
9. Does your prose flow together, using a variety in sentence structures? Do you use any rhetorical effects for emphasis?
   
10. Is your prose concise and your word choice vivid and precise? Have you eliminated ineffectual or unnecessary repetition?
    
11. Does your essay go off on any tangents or include any irrelevant material?
    
12. Have you addressed any significant opposing opinions with a convincing rebuttal or qualification?
    
13. Who is the audience? Is the essay's tone appropriate for that audience? Is your tone consistent throughout the essay?
    
14. Does the conclusion reaffirm, reflect upon, or extend the main point of the essay? Does it give your essay enough sense of completion and closure?
    
15. Do you have a good title? Does it reflect the content and emphasis of the essay?
    
16. Have you gotten rid of all spelling mistakes and grammatical and punctuation errors?
    
17. Have you included page numbers and citations if you quote from outside material?
    18)
18. Have you reread the assignment to make sure that you have completed all of its components?

Other suggestions:

1. Read your essay out loud - or have someone read it to you. When you listen to it, you probably will hear mistakes and inconsistencies that you unknowingly might skip over when silently reading to yourself.
2. Take a break and gain some critical distance. Put your essay away for a few hours, or even a few days, so that you can come back to it fresh.
3. Look at the peer review questions and answer them for your own essay.
4. Don't be chained to your monitor. Print out your draft, making notations for revision by hand. Then go back to your computer and add them in. Believe it or not, we conceptualize information differently on paper vs. on a screen.
5. Use your computer to help you look at your writing in different ways. Take a paragraph and divide it into distinct sentences, which you line up one under another. Look for patterns (repetition: deliberate or accidental?), style issues (variety in sentence structure?), and fluidity of transitions between sentences.
6. Take into account feedback -- even if it initially doesn't seem significant to you. You might not decide to act on the advice you've received, but at least consider it before dismissing it.
7. Revise out of order. Chose a paragraph at random and look at it on its own, and only then in relation to its context. A variation on this idea is revising backwards. Sometimes our conclusions are the weakest simply because we always get to them last, when we're tired; do your conclusion first for once.
8. Always improve on yourself. Just because someone's read your essay and hasn't noted problems in a specific sentence or paragraph doesn't mean that you shouldn't approach that sentence or paragraph with a critical eye and try to think of ways to make it even better.
9. Finally, avoid the cut-and-paste version of revision. It's a good idea to correct mistakes or prose problems; however, don't just change them without considering the impact that the revision makes on the rest of the essay. Sometimes it is possible just to add a missing comma or substitute in a more precise verb, but often you need to revise more than just the isolated problem so that the sentence/paragraph/essay as a whole continues to "fit" and flow together.