Whether you are writing an essay to hand in as a part of your coursework or have a document you will be using to promote yourself or your business, knowing how to get over the line and actually finish is essential. All too often, writers – even experienced ones – carry on writing, getting all of their thoughts out onto their computer, often appending ideas or going over the same ground in new ways. However, what readers want is something that is not only finished, but also to the point.
Achieving something that’s engaging and readable isn’t always easy – even when there are some writing gems in your work. In other words, if your good ideas are too buried, then they just won’t get the attention they deserve. How do you prepare essays, dissertations, and other written work so that they’re not only finished, but ready to be read? There are several steps to consider and – no – it’s not all about rewriting.
In This Article:
When Is Your Draft Actually Finished and Print-Ready?
The first thing to understand is that drafting needs to come to an end. Of course, all writers will understand that they need to carefully proofread their work to deal with typographical errors and, in some cases, to fact-check their work. However, this shouldn’t mean extensive reworking or lengthy rewrites unless you really cannot stand what you’ve written. Instead, proofreading should be about dealing with minor issues and removing anything that is superfluous and overly wordy. What you want is something that hones in on your central argument or thesis without going off script more than a couple of times. Avoid repetition and redundant information while cutting anything that reads as though it is filler text, sections that been inserted simply to meet an expected or self-imposed word count. Only after this process will your essay be ready for printing, ideally using a professional service provider – such as BachelorPrint, for example – since home printing rarely generates the classy finish of an expert printing service.
Editing – Creating Structure, Flow, and Better Readability
Following your proofread checks and removal of sections of text you didn’t think made the grade, it is time to consider the order of your remaining words. Once a draft has been checked, think about the logical flow of what you are saying. Some essays will have a very clear flow and might, for example, work best as a chronological description of events. However, especially in academic writing, the order of different sections and paragraphs needs to follow the logic of an argument. Typically, this will mean laying out your principal idea in the introduction, and then following that up with sections or chapters which make the case. Usually, writers will open with their strongest argument and progress through their remaining ideas in order of their perceived robustness, much as a lawyer might lay out their arguments in a courtroom.
Copying and pasting entire sections of text to create the desired structure might sound radical, but at least it is easy to do with modern word processors. You can always add a sentence here or there to link sections you’ve moved to improve flow if anything seems disjointed from a readability perspective, of course. Even better, modern technology makes editing simpler thanks to screen recording, a good way to convert visual material, such as infographics, into edited words. When you’re done, read the text out loud. If anything sounds clunky, then it will be, and you should find a new way of wording any clauses or sentences that fall into this bracket.
Formatting for a Clean, Professional-Looking Layout
Before sending your essay off to the printers, consider how it will look on the page. This isn’t always as simple as it may sound when you’ve been used to looking at your words on a screen. Utilize your computer’s screen view so you can see the look of each page. Ensure there are clear headings and subheadings to guide the reader through the text. Essays look best when headings are in the same font as the body text, even if you use a larger font size for them.
Check each page’s margins to ensure they are uniform and that nothing is too crowded. Paragraph gaps should be consistent throughout the text, and there should also be no double-spacing unless you are writing to a specific house style that calls for it. Since spaces are – by their very nature – invisible, double ones can be hard to spot. Run a ‘find’ tool and ask the word processor to highlight any double spaces it finds. You can then use the ‘replace’ function to supplant any such occurrences with uniform, single spaces. Finally, formatting for print usually means adding page numbers and footers, which allows readers to keep track of where they are and spot any missing or mis-ordered pages with ease.
Conclusion
In the end, ensuring a text is both readable and print-ready constitutes more than simply finishing the draft. Few writers have professional editors to help them, so gaining editing skills is a key part of ensuring your writing is as polished as it can be.
