How to Revise An Article

I have some ideas about how to revise an article, from a different angle from those of Tanya. She has ten good suggestions arranged in a helpful order. Mine are oriented not toward making a rough draft into a final one (remember I don't believe in rough drafts), but rather turning an article you thought was finished into one that really is.

1. Get someone else to read it. Revision implies that you have a version that needs to be revised, that you've taken it as far as you can on your own. You could send it to a journal and use the referees' comments, or, if you are less confident you can have someone read it before sending it to a journal.

2. Put the article away for a while while someone is reading it for you. You cannot revise if you are still too close to the moment of composition. A revision is a rewriting from a certain distance.

3. Organize your reader's suggestions. Begin with the easiest ones to correct and get those out of the way. The formulate a plan to incorporate other reasonable suggestions that you agree with and think would strengthen the article. Make a list of substantive revisions you want to make and do them in order.

4. Now do a final reading of the article and change any sentence that catches your attention. You will be looking for any slight ambiguity, lack of clarity, infelicity. You have to pay close attention to your own reactions. Which sentences just bother you a little bit every single time you read them? You know that, without being horrid, they are not quite right yet. It doesn't matter if anyone else would object to them. If you don't like them, you should change them. If you aren't changing at least one sentence in each paragraph on average you are not really doing it right.

5. But at a certain point you have to let it go. If I really made every single sentence exactly the way I wanted it to be I would never actually finish anything.