Comprehensive Essay Revision and Editing
Budget: $10 – $30 USD
Revision Essays
ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION:
For this essay assignment, you’ll have to revise, expand, edit, and resubmit the first two essays you submitted
this semester: the Fiction Analysis Essay and the Fiction Research Essay. Before you begin this assignment, make
sure to (A) review the original essay assignment sheets, as well as the texts of the stories you wrote about; (B)
study the various handouts on revision and editing that I posted to Canvas; and (C) read through my detailed
comments and editing notations on the original essays that I graded and returned to you.
You should start the revision process by focusing on each essay’s main point—which should be implied in the
essay’s title and clearly expressed in a thesis statement at the end of your introduction paragraphs. Remember,
good thesis statements make “arguable” claims—and those claims should be expressed generally (they should
not, in other words, simply state what happens to the characters in a short story). An effective thesis should
also establish a clear controlling idea that limits what you will discuss in the essay—so if your original essay
includes any points or examples that are not relevant to the claim in your thesis, those points should be cut
from the revision. Finally, make sure to reiterate your essay’s main point, or argument, in all of the essay’s key
claim moments: not just the thesis at the end of the intro, but also the topic and concluding sentences in each
body paragraph and the rephrased thesis at the start of your conclusion.
When revising an essay, you should also try to make each paragraph more unified and coherent. To revise for
unity, make sure every point and example included in a body paragraph clearly relates a single controlling
idea. That idea should be clearly expressed in the paragraph’s topic sentence, and it should be related to the
essay’s larger argument – that is, its main point or thesis statement claim – in the paragraph’s concluding
sentence. To revise for coherence, consider how each paragraph’s points are ordered. Is there an obvious
organizational pattern to the paragraph? Would it be more effective if you reordered the points within it? You
should also make sure there’s a clear, logical “flow” between all the sentences in each paragraph. The best way
to achieve this “flow” is by repeating key words or phrases in adjacent sentences and/or including transitional
expressions (like “however,” “consequently,” and “for example”) between sentences to clarify their logical
relationship. Finally, make sure to edit both of your essay revisions carefully; they should be relatively free of
all major errors — (1) comma splices, (2) run-ons, (3) sentence fragments, and (4) subject-verb errors.
DUE DATE: Thursday, December 11th @ 5:00 pm
(The last day of Jeff State’s “Final Exam Week” this semester)
OTHER REQUIREMENTS:
• MLA-style heading block in top left-hand corner of first page
• Typed and double-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font
• Standard margin lengths and left-aligned text for every paragraph in essay
• Numerous quotations from the literary work and, when required, from research sources
• MLA-style parenthetical citations (after each quote)
• MLA-style works cited page (on own page at end of essay)
ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION:
For this essay assignment, you’ll have to revise, expand, edit, and resubmit the first two essays you submitted
this semester: the Fiction Analysis Essay and the Fiction Research Essay. Before you begin this assignment, make
sure to (A) review the original essay assignment sheets, as well as the texts of the stories you wrote about; (B)
study the various handouts on revision and editing that I posted to Canvas; and (C) read through my detailed
comments and editing notations on the original essays that I graded and returned to you.
You should start the revision process by focusing on each essay’s main point—which should be implied in the
essay’s title and clearly expressed in a thesis statement at the end of your introduction paragraphs. Remember,
good thesis statements make “arguable” claims—and those claims should be expressed generally (they should
not, in other words, simply state what happens to the characters in a short story). An effective thesis should
also establish a clear controlling idea that limits what you will discuss in the essay—so if your original essay
includes any points or examples that are not relevant to the claim in your thesis, those points should be cut
from the revision. Finally, make sure to reiterate your essay’s main point, or argument, in all of the essay’s key
claim moments: not just the thesis at the end of the intro, but also the topic and concluding sentences in each
body paragraph and the rephrased thesis at the start of your conclusion.
When revising an essay, you should also try to make each paragraph more unified and coherent. To revise for
unity, make sure every point and example included in a body paragraph clearly relates a single controlling
idea. That idea should be clearly expressed in the paragraph’s topic sentence, and it should be related to the
essay’s larger argument – that is, its main point or thesis statement claim – in the paragraph’s concluding
sentence. To revise for coherence, consider how each paragraph’s points are ordered. Is there an obvious
organizational pattern to the paragraph? Would it be more effective if you reordered the points within it? You
should also make sure there’s a clear, logical “flow” between all the sentences in each paragraph. The best way
to achieve this “flow” is by repeating key words or phrases in adjacent sentences and/or including transitional
expressions (like “however,” “consequently,” and “for example”) between sentences to clarify their logical
relationship. Finally, make sure to edit both of your essay revisions carefully; they should be relatively free of
all major errors — (1) comma splices, (2) run-ons, (3) sentence fragments, and (4) subject-verb errors.
DUE DATE: Thursday, December 11th @ 5:00 pm
(The last day of Jeff State’s “Final Exam Week” this semester)
OTHER REQUIREMENTS:
• MLA-style heading block in top left-hand corner of first page
• Typed and double-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font
• Standard margin lengths and left-aligned text for every paragraph in essay
• Numerous quotations from the literary work and, when required, from research sources
• MLA-style parenthetical citations (after each quote)
• MLA-style works cited page (on own page at end of essay)