Revising and testing drafts

If you have been in any type of any English class, then odds are that your teacher will assign some form of peer editing or reviewing. Not only must you edit and revise your own paper but it does help to have another person review your work. I have never been as thorough as the guidelines in the book suggest, but I think that it had some interesting and useful tips. To read your draft from the perspective of your reader and identify if your work is usable and persuastive (an underlying concept in the book). I also think it is helpful to step away from your draft for a specified time and read your draft out loud and very slow. This helps to pick up on any confusing sentences or organizational problems. One more tip that I thought to be helpful was to review your draft once for substantive errors and once for mechanical errors. It's hard to read through a paper one time and fix all areas of error. Reading through your draft at least five times and concentrating on five different aspects could help to eliminate different kinds of errors.

Something that I have never done is testing drafts. It seems like it would be very helpful in the workplace whether it be a document explaining a step by step procedure or for sharing information across departments. I thought it was interesting to read the different ways that you can test for usability. The performance test can actually test the reader on whether they can perform the procedure after reading the document. If the reader is close to your target reader this can help you decide to have more specified details in a step or eliminate unnecessary steps. I like the location step because it tests whether your work is organized in an effective way. And last, the understanding test which is asking questions to see if your target reader comprehends the information. I will take into consideration the steps from chapters 14 and 15 the next time I have to edit a paper.