How to Write Better Essays

and manageable is to revise a number of times, each time checking on

a different range of things.

This may seem a lot of work, but it will certainly pay dividends: each

extra revision always improves your work. The effortless feel of talk in

print that flows across the page in light elegant prose only comes from

multiple revisions undertaken with a clear purpose in mind each time.

But that’s not to say that this is an endless process. As your writing

improves you’ll know when it’s time to stop and put it aside – you’ll

know when it’s finished.

In the next chapter

What follows is a strategy of five revisions, each one looking for dif-

ferent things. You may find you want to do more than five, because you

can see there are still improvements coming through each time, but

you should regard five as the minimum. In the next chapter we will

tackle the first two revisions, which deal with the structural features of

the essay.

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