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Section 2: Global Revisions

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Many instructors recommend that in their revision, students work from the biggest elements to the smallest. This is, on the whole, good advice because it makes the act of revision methodical.

Global revisions are revisions aimed at refining the general structure of the writing and changing the shape and reasoning in your paper. Before dealing with details of style and language(editing and proofreading), be sure that you have presented ideas that are clear and forceful.

When looking globally at your work, please focus particularly on the following aspects:

1. Make sure the structure is a complete and logical one

The first thing to look at when you revise is to make sure that your academic paper has a complete structure, which usually includes an introduction, a discussion and a conclusion.

Then analyze your arguments. The process of analysis involves breaking down an idea or an argument into its parts and evaluating those parts on their merits. When you analyze your own paper, then, you are breaking that paper down into its parts and asking yourself whether or not these parts support the paper as you envision it. Here is a checklist to help you analyze your argument and the general structure.

·Does your thesis say what you want it to say? Does it make a point worth considering?

·Does the paper deliver what your thesis promises to deliver?

·Make an outline of the paper you’ve just written. Does this outline reflect your intentions?

·Is each point in your outline adequately developed?

·Is each point equally developed? (That is, does your paper seem balanced, overall?)

·Is each point relevant? Interesting?

·Have you really presented an argument, or is your paper merely a series of observations, a summary?

·Do you see any holes in your argument? Or do you find the argument convincing?

·Have you supplied ample evidence for your arguments?

·Do you see any logical fallacies?