7.5 Tidying up: the importance of reviewing and revising your draft

A good piece of writing almost never emerges from the first draft. The very best writers review and revise their work, often numerous times. Though you need to know generally what you want to say before you start to write, you often do not know specifically what you want to say until you have written it. This means that good writing very often involves writing followed by rewriting as one, integrated practice.

Many student essays show every sign of not having been reviewed and revised, very much to their detriment. This is a shame, because in many such cases significant improvements could easily have been made if the time had been taken to review and revise the draft. Often the difference is worth a whole grade or more.

We discussed the importance of reviewing and revising your draft in section 3.4. Refer to that section for a reminder of this all-important but often neglected practice.