Enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment.

This Course Learning Outcome, which revolves around reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment is the most basic and critical piece of writing.

Unfortunately, it is also the most overlooked. I have a hunch that because reading, drafting, and revising are such a basic component of writing, it gets overlooked for fancier strategies or gimmicks to improve one’s writing.

This is the equivalent of a beginner tennis player focusing on his or her backhand slice instead spending that time working on his or her footwork. The backhand slice is fancy and looks “cool” so it takes players attention away from “boring” footwork training which would pay off more than a backhand slice in the long run.

Many of my classmates, who are very smart and creative individuals seem to have completely by-passed the stage where they re-read their work. This is such a simple and effective method of making their work professional that it is critical my peers force this tactic into habit for everything they write, from emails to text messages.

Here is an example of some comments made to my Memo assignment. I made these comments while rereading the assignment.

I made these edits while giving my draft a final proofread. Here is the revision edition:

I would like to note that it helps to have people other than you read your work. This is because no one has a greater understanding of your linguistics than you yourself. Running it by someone else can help simulate how your intended target will receive your work.

Finally, I would like to note that it is particularly important to remove the digital footprint left by your edits and comments. This is only true, but very critical in the situations when using a third party to send documents, such as Blackboard.

This is important because your formal and intended audience will most likely throw your work into the bin once they see the edits and comments. They will not even read it. Trust me, and double check this.

To do so, you need to open up the file that contains the comments and remove them completely. Even if they are invisible to you, a third party system such as Blackboard will resurface them. This is true even if you “resolved” the comment on your native software (Google Docs and Microsoft Word).