Defining Revising vs. Rewriting
The definition of rewriting is to “write (something) again so as to alter or improve it.” In this module, we focus on ways to alter and improve your writing, but we wish to make a distinction between revising and rewriting. For our purposes, rewriting would essentially mean throwing away your draft and starting again, whereas revising would mean making incremental improvements to your draft.
For example, you begin to draft a business letter to a supplier because you have a complaint about recent late deliveries. You address it to the client services department and include referencing numbers, dates and times of the late deliveries. Just then your boss gets back from a conference and she tells you that she wound up having lunch with the director of client services for that very supplier. She said the director was very interested in your experience and wanted something on paper sent directly to him. You now have to decide whether to simply revise the letter or start fresh with a rewrite.
You re-read your draft and realize (1) the audience has changed from a department to a specific person; (2) that specific person is already interested in building/maintaining a relationship; (3) the purpose is no longer to complain but to build a better future relationship by solving past problems, namely, late deliveries; and (4) the tone feels overly formal now, considering the new audience and new purpose. For these reasons you decide to start fresh with a re-write, give the draft to your boss for review/comments, and then officially begin looking at your document through the lenses of the three stages of revision.
The Three Stages of Editing (Revision)
When you are editing, it can be tempting to try to do everything at once. This is usually a recipe for confusion, fatigue, and missed errors. Instead, go through your draft more strategically, moving from ensuring your big ideas make sense to ensuring you spelled your address correctly. These stages of editing do come in a sequence that can work well for most people, but if you’re already a master editor with a revision style that works for you, that’s fine too. You can still use the following stages in any sequence to ensure your finished document is as polished and professional as possible.
Substantive/Structural Edit
The structural edit aims to make sure that the ideas in the body of your document make sense. At this level you will ask yourself questions like does this paragraph make sense considering my audience and purpose? Is the information complete? This would be the stage that you might want to ensure you’ve covered the Five W’s and one H, as applicable (who, what, when, where, why, and how). You might discover that you need to reorganize some paragraphs to make your ideas clearer or get to the point sooner. But the purpose of the structural edit is to make sure that the substance of your message will be clear and logical.
There are some things to consider regarding struc