ShmoopTube

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Shmoop hey so you've written a draft of an essay congratulations that means it's

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time to print and handed in and chill on the beach for a few weeks right

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well not quite yeah before you book that trip to Bora Bora or Bora squared as

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[man and woman sitting on a beach] the math majors like to call it you might want to do a bit of revising and no

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you can't revise on the beach in Bora squared

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volleyball and proofreading aren't really complimentary activities though we [boy using a macbook on a volleyball court]

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usually think of revising is having two main parts one reorganizing your work

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and two polishing it but in reality we're looking at four parts first a

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break from writing where we put the essay side for a day or two before we

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start revising then the second break after reorganizing our work before we

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start the polishing stage and these breaks you know help us get a bit of

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[man bungee jumping] distance from our work so that we can come back to it with fresh eyes and yes

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if you happen to live in Bora Bora well you can take your breaks on the beach

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permission granted but once we actually get into

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reorganizing our work we'll need a lot more brainpower than it takes this can [woman sunbathing on a lounger]

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the reorganization phase is all about evaluating your own work sure you

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probably like the writer well heck you are the writer but don't let those

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personal feelings get in the way be sure to focus on stuff like how well

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you're making your main point how well your evidence stands up and whether

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everything in the essay is relevant to your main point the harsher you are the [boy curled up in a ball in a room]

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better your work will be and we're sure the writer will be able to take whatever

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criticisms you can dish out while the reorganization phase requires you to

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think big and look at how all the various parts of your essay work [woman typing on a macbook]

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together the polishing stage is a lot more detail-oriented it involves a lot

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of proofreading and I looking for the tiniest of errors that might be hiding [finger scrolling through a book]

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somewhere in your essay and those errors do love to hide well be on the lookout for

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stuff like spelling errors a left out or doubled words like really really

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[list of proofreading errors] sentence fragments run-on sentences comma splices subject verb agreement

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mixed construction parallelism pronoun reference agreement and apostrophes

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all right well once you've given your essay a rigorous polish it should be [hand polishing a screen]

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close to error-free and ready to be submitted

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and then and only then are you free to hop the next flight to Bora Bora hey you [plane taking off in the sunset]

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need a travel buddy we might know someone ah yeah

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