Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010

Check your introduction, conclusion, and claim
Revising your draft
Writing your paper

12.1 Check Your Introduction, Conclusion, and Claim

12.2 Make Sure the Body of Your Report Is Coherent

12.3 Check Your Paragraphs

12.4 Let Your Draft Cool, Then Paraphrase It

Some students think that once they have a draft, they're done. Thoughtful writers know better. They write a first draft to see whether they can make a case to support their answer. Then they revise their draft until they think they've presented that case in a way that meets the needs and expectations of their readers.

That's hard, because we all know our own work too well to read it as others will. To revise effectively, you cannot simply read a draft to see whether it satisfies you. You must know what readers look for and whether your draft helps them find it. To that end, we will give you advice that may seem mechanical. But only when you can analyze your draft objectively can you avoid reading into it what you want your readers to get out of it.

We suggest revising top down: first check the shape of the outer frame (you'll write the last draft of your introduction and conclusion later). Then look at the overall organization, then sections, paragraphs, sentences, finally grammar, spelling, and punctuation (for guidance on these issues, see part 3). Of course, no one revises so neatly. We all fiddle with words as we revise paragraphs and revise sentences as we reorganize sections. But you're likely to make the best revisions if you revise from whole to part, even if at the moment you're revising, a part is the only whole you have.

QUICK TIP

Revise on Hard Copy

One secret to successful revising is to get a fresh look at your work. You can do that if you revise on hard copy, especially when you want to catch the small details. So edit early drafts on-screen, if you prefer. But you will catch more errors and get a better sense of the structure of your report if you read at least one version of it on paper, as your readers will.

12.1 Check your introduction, conclusion, and claim

Your readers must see three things quickly and unambiguously:

✵ where your introduction ends

✵ where your conclusion begins

✵ what sentences in one or both state your main claim

To make the first two clearly visible, insert a subhead or extra space between your introduction and body and another between the body and conclusion. To make your main claim clear, underline it. We'll come back to it in chapter 13.

WORKING IN GROUPS

Trading Papers

One of your greatest obstacles to revising well is your memory. By the time you are ready to revise, you know your paper so well that you can't really read it; you can only remember what you meant when you wrote it. That's why our suggestions for revision are so mechanical: they help you by-step your too good memory of your paper.

But your group provides an even better way to by-step your memory. For the revision steps here and in chapter 14, trade papers with a colleague. Each of you should mark up and diagnose the other's paper. We guarantee that you'll be far better at finding what needs improvement in your colleague's paper than in your own.

But don't just read and make suggestions. Suggestions are welcome, but what is far more valuable is for each of you to go through each diagnostic step with the other's paper. You can't fix a problem you can't find.