Alright. So, in this next module, now, we're going
to talk about revision. And as I said before, I think revision is
really, really important because, because that's where the elegance comes in, in
writing. So, here's some tips I'm going to give you
for revision. This is just sort of an overview.
Read your work out loud, do a verb check, cut clutter, do an organizational review,
and get feedback and editing help. So, I'm going to go through each one of
these in turn. So, one of the big tips I can give you on
revision is to read your writing out loud. That's because the brain actually
processes the spoken word differently than the written word.
You may have noticed that in this course, as I've been reading some examples to you
out loud, you kind of hear where all the awkwardness is where all the kind of
repetition you hear that better. Your brain picks it up better when you
hear it, rather than when you see it. I don't know why that is but it's just, if
that's just true. So, always read your work out loud.
That can really, really help you to pick up where things don't sound so good.
Sometimes it even helps to read it out loud and put it in the tape recorder and
listen to it back. But usually you will catch it just in, in
reading it once. So, read your writing out loud, that's a
really great way to improve your writing, especially on revision.
Another really great tip on revision is to do a verb check, okay?
So, if you're kind of stuck and you're reading over your paper, it just, it
doesn't really kind of have any [UNKNOWN] it doesn't sound great, it's kind of
boring, you just, you're not quite sure how to approach improving your work.
Here's a really easy thing to do. Take a couple of paragraphs, go through it
and underline each main verb, the main verb in each sentence, okay?
And after you've underline them all, kind of go back and look and see what your verb
choices were. Do you have a lot of to be verb?
Is, are, was, were, you've, been, am. Do you have a lot of passive voice verbs,
the reaction was observed by her. Do you have buried verb?
This is where you got a really long subject before you get to the main verb.
So, we had this example earlier. A careful monitoring of achievement levels
before and after the introduction of computers in the teaching of out course
revealed. It took forever to get to the verb.
So, pay attention, very careful attention to your verbs, because as I mentioned
several times, the verbs are really what drive the sentence.
If you've got good verbs, your writing is really going to be lively and easy to
read. So, so, pay attention to your verbs by
actually going through and underlining them all and asking yourself, do I have
lackluster verbs? Do I have passive verbs?
Do I have buried verbs? If you have any of those things, rewrite
your sentences to avoid them. Use the thesaurus to find some good verbs.
Yeah, there's an also stress in this course, you need to go through an revision
and cut your own work, and that's hard to do.
It's hard to cut your own work but now, you've done the editing practice in this
course. Hopefully you've become better at noticing
some of these problems and cutting unnecessary clutter.
And you're going to be doing it on your peers' work this week, and so that'll also
help you to practice. So, things to watch for.
This is just a little review of what we did in week one.
So, you're going to watch for dead weight words and phrases.
So, be on the lookout for things like, it should be emphasized that, I want to tell
you about, in my opinion. Empty words and phrases.
These are things like methodologic, basic tenets of important that really don't add
anything to the paper. Those long words or phrases that could be
short like muscular or cardiorespiratory performance rather than fitness.
Also unnecessary jargon and, and acronyms. So, as I've mentioned before, try to catch
yourself if you're using a lot of acronyms and go back and replace those with the
actual words. I would stick to only the most commonly
used acronyms. And, of course, jargon.
Ask yourself, do I really need this to be the jargony word or can I say this in a
simpler way. Try to catch repetitive words or phrases.
So, last week, we had the example where they had said teaches clinicians, and then
in the next sentence, they wanted to have something different, so they said it
guides clinicians. Well, actually we didn't need that
repetition, we actually converted that into a single sentence.
And the, on the lookout for adverbs, I always put these in, in the first draft,
so I've got to go back and find them and, You know, get rid of them.
Very, really, quite, basically, generally, all those adverbs you got to go.
So get used to picking on your own work and cutting out all of those extra
unnecessary words. That's all this sentence level editing
type of things. So, if your going to do this sentence
level editing to make everything sound more elegant And then, kind of at a higher
level, You should also do some kind of what I
call an organizational review. And the way that I do an organizational
review, I actually do this for students.
So, in the margins of their paper, for each paragraph, I'll tag each paragraph
with just a phrase or even a sentence that sums up the main point,
You know, like, this paragraph is about pathways, so I might even just write
pathways, mechanisms, you know, on that paragraph.
And I'll go through each paragraph and I'll give that little tag.
What I inevitably find is that there are multiple paragraphs with the same tag in
different places in the paper. So, then I move those paragraphs around so
that I improve the logical flow and bring similar ideas in the paper together.
So, it's a really easy thing to do. Just go through your own paper.
In the margin, for each paragraph, write down in whether a couple of words, what
was the main point in that paragraph that I was trying to get across.
It helps you really evaluate how well have you structured your manuscript.
Hopefully, if you did a good job on your pre-writing, what comes out in your first
draft is already well-organized But sometimes, you know, things happen and you
get something that doesn't have good organization.
Now, you got to go back and you've got to pick that up and you've actually got to do
an organizational structural revision. That's much harder to do than just
sentence level editing. So, hopefully you don't have to do too
much of this, but a way to kind of point out where you might need to do a little
bit of organizational review, big picture, moving things around is to do this kind of
tagging exercise. When you're editing each others work the
assignments are fairly short but still that's another way to kind of help edit
your peers' work is to do this same kind of tagging of the different paragraphs.
So, do a kind of high-level, organizational review.
And then, revision is, it's really helpful if you can get outside feedback.
We're all, it's, it's hard for us all to edit our own work.
You get better at it the more you do it, but it's still hard to edit your own work.
You get attached to some of your work. So, ask someone outside of your
department, hopefully outside of your own little niche in science. Ask somebody else
to read your manuscript. It doesn't have to be somebody who has any
training in editing or anything like that, just somebody who's intelligent, has
enough knowledge of science to be able to read a scientific manuscript, but
hopefully not domain specific knowledge. And make sure that they can tell back to
you, the main findings that take on messages in the significance of your work.
Even without any technical background in your particular area, they ought to be
able to get those three things from your paper without any problem.
If they're having trouble getting that much out,
Ask them to point out particularly hard to read sentences and paragraphs in your
paper. They can just, you know, circle them,
underline them. Those they can point you to the places
where you really need to do some revision. Or they may just say that this is written
at too high of a level and you really need to bring it down one level.
Make it simpler, make it clearer, make it more active and fun to read and less
boring to read. So, get some outside from somebody outside
your immediate field, and. And find a good editor to edit your work.
Someone who actually knows how to do that sentence level or editing.
It's really, really helpful if you can find somebody like that who can edit your
work. Yet, sometimes, you know a spouse, a
significant other, a friend, if they're willing, can make a good editor.
And, maybe you'll meet somebody in this course who's a good peer editor, who you
could team up with later, and you could edit each other's work.
It's often good if it's a reciprocal relationship, where you edit their work,
and they edit your work, and that way, both party's benefit.
So, if you can find a good person to work with like that who knows something about
sentence level editing, that can really help improve your work.
And hopefully, you also have somebody like an advisor, or an editor down the road,
who can polish your work at the end of the day.
The preceding program is copyrighted by the Board of Trustees of the Leland
Stanford Junior University. Please visit us at med.stanford.edu.