For the most efficient writing process
Revision step 3: organization

Poor organization usually presents itself in the form of redundant information that pops up in several paragraphs of a paper.

A revision checklist won't help here. Solving the problem of redundant information takes grunt work.

Here are links to earlier pages about revision, in case you missed them:

• Revision terminology
• Tools for revision
• Revise for purpose & unity

To see if they have redundant information, students lay body paragraphs 1 and 2 in front of them. They read the first sentence of body paragraph 1. Then they read body paragraph 2 looking for another place where they said the same thing.

If they don't find any similar sentences, they read the second sentence of body paragraph 1. Then they read all of body paragraph 2 looking for ideas that are similar to that sentence. They have to read in that back-and-forth fashion through the entire paragraph first paragraph.

If they find ideas that are repeated, they have to move repeated ideas into one paragraph. It doesn't matter which paragraph they choose as their dump site. All they are trying to do is group the related ideas together.

When they finish body paragraphs 1 and 2 and dumped all the repeated information into one or the other, they need to do the same process with another pair of body paragraphs, for example paragraphs 2 and 3.

They must repeat the process until they have compared each body paragraph with one other. At that point, they will have all the related ideas grouped in paragraphs.

Then they have to get rid of repeated ideas. If they have one idea in their essay three times, they need to get rid of two of those sentences. They can cut them out or rewrite to use the best sounding parts of the sentences.

This kind of revision is a tedious, time-consuming process. Only the most dedicated writers will do it even once, no matter how many times their revision checklist says to do it.

A better alternative: avoidance

For nonfiction writers, the cause of redundant material in the essay is overlapping points in the writing skeleton™. That means students can almost always avoid having to do painstaking revision by making sure their writing skeleton™ points don't overlap.

In other words, you need to convince students to revise in the pre-composition stages of the writing process. If you can convince students to do that, you'll see a great improvement in the organization of student essays.

How do you convince students to revise as they go along?

Importance of trial and error

Some students will try revising during the planning stages of writing because the teacher said to do it. Most students, I fear, have to learn the hard way. They either

• Write disorganized essays on which they get a failing grade, or

• Write disorganized essays from which they are saved from failure by being walked through the tedious process described above.

As much as it grieves me to say it, no amount of inspired teaching is ever quite as effective at developing skill in the application of the writing process as personal trial and error.

The remaining two problems that writers have to address during the revision stage of the writing process concern development and coherence. For those issues, students can again use a revision checklist developed from their writing process tools and strategies.