Take an Aggressive
Fault-Finding
Attitude
Consider
whether you need to make major changes in your ideas,
arguments, organization, logic.
Allow
Incubation Time
It's difficult
to thoroughly critique a draft shortly after writing it.
Allow time before revising so that you will be more likely
to approach your document as your reader would.
Assess the Communication
Situation
Because new
insights may have occurred to you when writing, evaluate how
your perception of your purpose, audience, and tone has
evolved. Have you changed your mind on any of these? Is your
approach consistent?
Check
Overall Organization
Readers
generally expect you to sift through all of the facts and pertinent
laws and state succinctly your interpretation and
conclusions. Does the overall organization of your document work
well? Will the reader be able to follow the sequence of
ideas?
Check
Paragraphs
Are your
paragraphs in a logical order and of appropriate
length?
Check for
Length
Have you cut
out unnecessary substantive discussion?
Have you cut
clutter, redundancies and windy phrases?
Check for
Clarity
Check for
Continuity
Proofread
Read Aloud
Have you read
your document aloud to help improve your
voice and sentence flow?
Get
Feedback
A part of
making meaning, feedback is essential to creating
exemplary documents. Criticism of a document is just that.
Good critical readers are not impugning your character or
writing abilities. Instead, they are criticizing a manuscript, one
particular event. |
