Sentence Editing Drafts: An Editing Strategy

To edit your paper and help you find grammatical errors in your essay(particularly if you are struggling with run-on sentences and sentence fragments), I want you to try a neat editing trick. Part of fixing "errors" is being able to SEE them. This editing activity will help make grammatical errors more apparent:

Creating a "Sentence Editing" draft of your paper

1. Open your essay document in your word processor
2. Make a copy of the paper by doing a FILE >> SAVE AS and giving it a new name (like E4edit).
3. Next, in this E4edit version of your essay, hit ENTER twice after each sentence so that each separate sentence has an extra line between them.

Example original:
One thing I notice was the rules in college where much different from High school. In college there is no bell to say "Hey your late get to class". The teachers where not outside saying "You late get to class." If you are late in college the teacher thinks is Oh well she was late she missed some notes. If she really cares about this class she will get the notes from a friend later. Another thing I saw was in college there are no dress codes. I can wear what ever I want to when I want to. (...essay continues...)

In Sentence Editing Draft form
One thing I notice was the rules in college where much different from High school.

In college there is no bell to say "Hey your late get to class".

The teachers where not outside saying "You late get to class."

If you are late in college the teacher thinks is Oh well she was late she missed some notes.

If she really cares about this class she will get the notes from a friend later.

Another thing I saw was in college there are no dress codes.

I can wear what ever I want to when I want to.

Notice how each sentence is separated from the other sentences. Continue isolating sentences in this way for the entire document--move quickly. (It is tedious, I know.)

PRINT the Sentence Editing Draft version of your paper and EDIT it by marking corrections onto the draft. Try READING SENTENCES ALOUD to hear how they sound. If something doesn't sound right, then there is a good chance something is wrong in that sentence. Be particularly mindful of Punctuation and avoiding run-ons. Sentence fragments should stand out clearly in this version of your paper. See example of Sentence Editing draft with edits.

Look for opportunities to improve the flow and meaning of your sentences by using Sentence Combining also. If you spot a number of short sentences together, you may have an opportunity to combine these sentences.

Once you have finished editing the print version of your essay, open your original version of your essay and incorporate these editing changes into your text. Now you should be ready to turn in the paper--right? No. You still need to proofread carefully.

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