How To Revise An Essay In 3 Simple Steps - Scribbr

Have a language expert improve your writing

Proofreading Services

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes

Plagiarism Checker

Generate accurate citations for free

Citation Generator

1. Home
2. Knowledge Base
3. Essay
4. How to revise an essay in 3 simple steps

Essay

• How to write an essay
• Types of essays
  • The main types of essay
  • Argumentative
  • Expository
  • Narrative
  • Descriptive
  • Compare and contrast
  • Literary analysis
  • Rhetorical analysis
  • Personal statement
  • Statement of purpose
• Length of an essay
• Generating topic ideas
• Essay structure
  • Structuring an essay
  • Outlining
• The introduction
  • Essay introduction
  • Thesis statement
• The body
  • Writing the body
  • Paragraph structure
  • Topic sentences
  • Transition sentences
• The conclusion
• Revision process
• Essay example
• Checklist

Interesting topics

• Parts of speech
• Working with sources
• IEEE
• Commonly confused words
• Commas
• Definitions
• UK vs. US English
• Research bias
• Nouns and pronouns
• AMA style
• College essay
• Sentence structure
• Verbs
• Common mistakes
• Effective communication
• Using AI tools
• Fallacies
• Rhetoric
• Plurals
• APA Style 6th edition
• Applying to graduate school
• Statistics
• Chicago Style
• Language rules
• Methodology
• MLA Style
• Research paper
• Academic writing
• Starting the research process
• Dissertation
• Essay
• Tips
• APA Style 7th edition
• APA citation examples
• Citing sources
• Plagiarism

Try our other services

Proofreading & Editing

Have a human editor polish your writing to ensure your arguments are judged on merit, not grammar errors.

Get expert writing help

AI Proofreader

Get unlimited proofreading for 30 days

Try for free

Plagiarism Checker

Compare your paper to billions of pages and articles with Scribbr’s plagiarism checker.

Run a free check

Citation Generator

Generate accurate APA, MLA, and Chicago citations for free with Scribbr's Citation Generator.

Start citing

Paraphrasing Tool

Rewrite and paraphrase texts instantly with our AI-powered paraphrasing tool.

Try for free

Grammar Checker

Eliminate grammar errors and improve your writing with our free AI-powered grammar checker.

Try for free

How to Revise an Essay in 3 Simple Steps

Published on December 2, 2014 by Shane Bryson. Revised on December 8, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

Revising and editing an essay is a crucial step of the writing process. It often takes up at least as much time as producing the first draft, so make sure you leave enough time to revise thoroughly. Although you can save considerable time using our essay checker.

The most effective approach to revising an essay is to move from general to specific:

1. Start by looking at the big picture: does your essay achieve its overall purpose, and does it proceed in a logical order?
2. Next, dive into each paragraph: do all the sentences contribute to the point of the paragraph, and do all your points fit together smoothly?
3. Finally, polish up the details: is your grammar on point, your punctuation perfect, and your meaning crystal clear?

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

1. Step 1: Look at the essay as a whole
2. Step 2: Dive into each paragraph
3. Step 3: Polish the language
4. Other interesting articles

Step 1: Look at the essay as a whole

There’s no sense in perfecting a sentence if the whole paragraph will later be cut, and there’s no sense in focusing on a paragraph if the whole section needs to be reworked.

For these reasons, work from general to specific: start by looking at the overall purpose and organization of your text, and don’t worry about the details for now.

Purpose

Double-check your assignment sheet and any feedback you’ve been given to make sure you’ve addressed each point of instruction. In other words, confirm that the essay completes every task it needs to complete.

Then go back to your thesis statement. Does every paragraph in the essay have a clear purpose that advances your argument? If there are any sections that are irrelevant or whose connection to the thesis is uncertain, consider cutting them or revising to make your points clearer.

Organization

Next, check forlogical organization. Consider the ordering of paragraphs and sections, and think about what type of information you give in them. Ask yourself:

• Do you define terms, theories and concepts before you use them?
• Do you give all the necessary background information before you go into details?
• Does the argument build up logically from one point to the next?
• Is each paragraph clearly related to what comes before it?

Ensure each paragraph has a clear topic sentence that sums up its point. Then, try copying and pasting these topic sentences into a new document in the order that they appear in the paper.

This allows you to see the ordering of the sections and paragraphs of your paper in a glance, giving you a sense of your entire paper all at once. You can also play with the ordering of these topic sentences to try alternative organizations.

If some topic sentences seem too similar, consider whether one of the paragraphs is redundant, or if its specific contribution needs to be clarified. If the connection between paragraphs is unclear, use transition sentences to strengthen your structure.

Finally, use your intuition. If a paragraph or section feels out of place to you, even if you can’t decide why, it probably is. Think about it for a while and try to get a second opinion. Work out the organizational issues as best you can before moving on to more specific writing issues.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
• Vague sentences
• Grammar
• Style consistency

See an example

Step 2: Dive into each paragraph

Next, you want to make sure the content of each paragraph is as strong as it can be, ensuring that every sentence is relevant and necessary:

• Make sure each sentence helps support the topic sentence.
• Check for redundancies – if a sentence repeats something you’ve already said, cut it.
• Check for inconsistencies in content. Do any of your assertions seem to contradict one another? If so, resolve the disagreement and cut as necessary.

Step 3: Polish the language

Once you’re happy with the overall shape and content of your essay, it’s time to focus on polishing it at a sentence level, making sure that you’ve expressed yourself clearly and fluently.

You’re now less concerned with what you say than with how you say it. Aim to simplify, condense, and clarify each sentence, making it as easy as possible for your reader to understand what you want to say.

• Try to avoid complex sentence construction – be as direct and straightforward as possible.
• If you have a lot of very long sentences, split some of them into shorter ones.
• If you have a lot of very short sentences that sound choppy, combine some of them using conjunctions or semicolons.
• Make sure you’ve used appropriate transition words to show the connections between different points.
• Cut every unnecessary word.
• Avoid any complex word where a simpler one will do.
• Look out for typos and grammatical mistakes.

If you lack confidence in your grammar, our essay editing service provides an extra pair of eyes.

Other interesting articles

If you want to know more about AI tools, college essays, or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

Fallacies

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Bryson, S. (2023, December 08). How to Revise an Essay in 3 Simple Steps. Scribbr. Retrieved February 9, 2026, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/revising/

Cite this article

Is this article helpful?

97 14 You have already voted. Thanks :-) Your vote is saved :-) Processing your vote...

Shane Bryson

Shane finished his master's degree in English literature in 2013 and has been working as a writing tutor and editor since 2009. He began proofreading and editing essays with Scribbr in early summer, 2014.

Why do I see ads? Ads help us keep our tools free for everyone. Scribbr customers enjoy an ad-free experience!

"I thought AI Proofreading was useless but.."

I've been using Scribbr for years now and I know it's a service that won't disappoint. It does a good job spotting mistakes”

Start with a free scan