Check All Your Facts
When you finish editing for content and meaning, print or type a
clean copy of your paper, then double-check all of your facts for
accuracy:
■ Did you spell names, terms, and places correctly?
■ When you quoted dates and statistics, did you get your
numbers straight?
■ Do you have a source note (or preliminary source note) for
every fact, expression, or idea that is not your own?
■ If you quoted material from a source, did you quote that
source exactly, word for word, comma for comma, and did
you put the material in quotation marks?Mark any corrections on your new draft. Again, use a colored pen
or pencil so you can easily spot corrections later.
Keep Rewriting
Now take an even closer look at your sentences and paragraphs.
Try to make them smoother, tighter, and easier to understand:
■ Use action verbs and the active voice: “Some apes in captivity
have survived for 30 or more years” is better than “Ages of
30 years or more have been enjoyed by some apes in captivity.”
■ Consider dropping constructions beginning with “there is
(was)” from your vocabulary: “There was a storm at sea”
is a tired and boring way to proclaim, “A storm raged.”
■ Is there too much fat? Seize every opportunity to make the
same point in fewer words.Chapter 7 ■How to Write Terrific Papers 163