Pittsford Central School District



Editing and Revising

1. Circle all possible spelling errors in BLUE. Look for homonym errors: [their, there, they’re], [your & you’re], [to, two & too], etc. Remember, spell check doesn’t know your intentions, so it doesn’t catch everything.

2. Trace or circle the first word of each sentence and the end punctuation of each sentence in RED. This will give you a picture of your sentence lengths. Do they vary? If not, shorten some and lengthen others.

3. Look at your RED markings that include the first word of each sentence. Make sure no more than 3 sentences begin with same word in your whole paper. HINT: Try moving the predicate to the beginning of the sentence.

4. Use BLACK to mark the beginning of each paragraph with the paragraph symbol. Make sure your essay matches the assignment criteria and that your paragraphs are indented.

5. Use PURPLE to add details. Add juicy adjectives, strong verbs, and clarifying sentences. Your draft should look VERY PURPLE when you are done. Look at your word choice. Are you using words like “bad” and “good?” If yes, grab a thesaurus and choose stronger words.

6. Highlight your favorite sentence with YELLOW. Jot a quick note in the margin to explain why it’s your favorite. Try to make other sentences more like this one.

7. Use GREEN to circle and correct capitalization (proper nouns) and punctuation errors (check those commas). Make sure you don’t have slang or texting abbreviations.

8. Look at your paper one more time. Are you proud of your work? If yes, move on to your final copy. If not, you aren’t done; keep working until you are proud of what you have in front of you.

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