Category Archives: revision

line editing – learning from editors

If you are writing a book, it is highly likely that the publisher will send your manuscript to an editor. Most academic publishers these days do not engage editors who do a lot of developmental and structural work. So it … Continue reading

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revising – mark up your text to achieve focus

There’s so much to say about revising. Even though I’ve just published a book on revising – shameless plug – I still have things I want to say about it.   The key message in the book is that revising effectively … Continue reading

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cutting and pasting early text into the thesis – part 2.

So you are writing your thesis about the research that you have done. And what you write now is is likely to be a little different from the expanded proposal you wrote to confirm your candidature. And a little different … Continue reading

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revising drafts – #AcWriMo

In the spirit of #AcWriMo here is another book that you might find interesting and helpful – this week it’s Verlyn Klinkinborg’s (2012) Several short sentences about writing. Klinkinborg writes a book-length prose poem about authoring. His goal is to … Continue reading

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propositional density – a helpful steer on writing and revising

Yes, it’s another post on terminology, on naming. Being able to give something a name is important – a name is shorthand for a lot of information. When we name something we can then discuss it, and this is of … Continue reading

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using the progressive disclosure principle in academic writing

I work a lot with artists and designers. Because I’m a bit of a magpie, I have a habit of collecting – and then using – their principles and approaches. A lot of them are interesting, because they make you … Continue reading

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my supervisor expects me to keep revising – why?

I often hear doctoral researchers asking this question. They’ve sent their supervisor some writing. It’s come back with feedback and suggestions and maybe actual corrections. The doc. researcher has attended to all of these and sent the revised text back … Continue reading

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check for the passive voice

Passive voice. Put simply, the active voice is when the actor, the person doing the action, is named. The writer does not name the actor when using passive voice. Ironically, the first sentence above does not name the actor – … Continue reading

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the disappearing writer – a redrafting strategy

Academic writers often lose themselves when writing about literatures. It is easier to be textually confident when writing about what you did yourself than to summarise, synthesise and assess other people’s texts. Particularly if those texts are produced by more … Continue reading

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revising? start strategically

Whether you are revising your own writing or responding to reviewer feedback, you need to work out what to do. But you also need to work out where to start.  You may have made a revising plan or written out … Continue reading

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