REVISION STRATEGIES FOR
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Grace Noyes
Director, Snyder Communication Skills Center
Rawls College of Business
March 28, 2014
Preliminary Writing Guidelines
● Understand the journal’s audience and dialogue
● Read the journal’s articles for writing style
● Check Author Guidelines in journal (text layout,
citations, nomenclature, figures and tables)
● Write a detailed outline
● Don’t expect a perfect piece of writing
When revising…
…move from higher order to lower order
…evaluate your thesis
…write the purpose of each paragraph in the
margin
…check for topic sentences
…keep a record of consistent problems
Revise paragraphs
• Unified: Centered on one topic
• Coherent: Logically organized
• Supported: Information backs up the main idea
Unity
• Eliminate information that doesn’t relate to the
main idea
• Add information if relationship to main idea
isn’t clear
• Separate two main ideas into different
paragraphs
• Rewrite topic sentence to include other ideas
Coherence
• Include transitions
• Use repetition of key words and phrases
• Refer back to previously introduced
information
Original. Soils represent major sinks for metals
like cadmium that are released into the
environment. Soil does not have an infinite
capacity to absorb metal contaminants, and
when this capacity is exhausted, environmental
consequences are incurred. Contamination of
soils by cadmium and other heavy metals has
become a global concern in recent years
because of the increasing demands of society for
food production, waste disposal, and a healthier
environment. The main causes of cadmium
contamination in soils are amendment materials
(e.g., municipal waste sludge) and fallout from
nonferrous metal production and power plants.
Revision. Such sources as mines, smelters, power plants,
and municipal waste treatment facilities release metals into
the environment. These heavy metals, especially cadmium,
then find their way into the soil. The soil does not have an
infinite capacity to absorb these metals. Instead,
unabsorbed metals move through the soil into the
groundwater or are extracted by crops that take the
contamination into the food chain.
The links in the chain are underlined. The beginning of each new
sentence follows up familiar information, and the end introduces new
information that is then recycled. Sentences that did not relate
directly to the topic (the process of metal absorption by soil) have
been removed.
Revise Sentences
Use subordination to focus reader on one idea
 Although production cost have declined, they are still high.
Use parallel grammatical structure
 The valving improvements we seek will increase reliability,
accessibility, maintenance will decrease, and allow application
to all sizes of valves.
 The valving improvements we seek will increase reliability
and accessibility, decrease maintenance, and allow
application to all sizes of valves.
Revise Sentences
Limit nominalizations (noun made from a verb)
 The author’s analysis of our data omits any citation of sources that
would provide support for his criticism of our argument.
 When the author analyzed our data, he did not cite any sources that
would support his criticism of our argument.
Be concise
 As far as I am concerned, because of the fact that a situation
of discrimination continues to exist in the field of medicine,
women have not at the present time achieved equality with
men.
 Because of continuing gender discrimination in medicine,
women have yet to achieve equality with men.
Proofreading
• Subjects and verbs
• Pronouns and antecedents
• Prepositions
• Articles
• Possessives
• Correct use of words
• Restrictive and non-restrictive elements
Proofreading Tips
• Work from a printed copy
• Read out loud
• Circle every punctuation mark in the paper
• Use the “find” feature in Word
• Use Spell Check, but don’t rely only on it
• Give yourself enough time
• Break proofreading into blocks of time
Format
• Headings
• In-text citations
• Reference list
• Endnote.com, easybib.com, etc.
• Footnotes, endnotes
• Tables, graphs, etc.
• Spacing
Track Changes
Allows you to…
…insert punctuation, words, letters, etc.
…write comments
…note different proofers’ comments
…edit tables
Market categories thus define social and symbolic
boundaries among different types of products or
services in an industry (Lamont & Molnar, 2002),
which helps establish collective identities for products
within the category and inclusion or exclusion rules of
its constituent members.
I’m not sure what this clause is referring to. What “helps
establish collective…”? Are you referring to the entire first
clause: “Market industries thus define …”? Or are you
referring only to market categories themselves? Also, it is
unclear what the pronoun “it” is referring to: “..its
constituent members.”
Revision Strategies for “Revise and Resubmit”
1. Read the letter
2. List the revisions in an Excel file
a. Reviewer
b. Suggestions
c. Response
d. Done?
3. Extract and Label Suggestions
Example:
“One major problem with this article is that the
research methods are suspect.”
“Provide a more accurate and complete
discussion of the data collection.”
Revision Strategies for “Revise and Resubmit”
4. Rearrange suggestions logically
5. Decide how you will respond
6. Tackle revisions one by one
7. Use Excel file to write response letter
Example:
Reviewer One suggested that I engage the
literature at a deeper level to get the most out
of the data.
I have included a more in-depth analysis of
transnationalism into my data analysis
section.
Revision Strategies for “Revise and Resubmit”
8. Double-check
9. Do a final read-over of article
10. Re-submit
http://getalifephd.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-respond-to-revise-and-resubmit.html