Revision is the process of reworking a piece of writing to improve its clarity, structure, or fit for its audience. Revision is distinct from editing (fixing errors) and proofreading (catching surface mistakes) — it involves rethinking what the text says and how it says it.
Linda Flower and John Hayes showed through think-aloud protocols that revision isn’t a final stage in a linear sequence (prewrite → write → revise) but a recursive process that occurs throughout composing. Writers plan, draft, and revise in interleaving cycles, and experienced writers revise more — not less — than novices [@flowerhayes1981].
Peter Elbow clarified a practical tension in revision by distinguishing first-order thinking (generative, uncritical) from second-order thinking (analytical, editorial). Trying to generate and revise simultaneously produces neither fluency nor quality. Elbow’s method separates the two: write freely first, then revise critically [@elbow1981].
At the sentence level, revision has concrete, teachable methods. Richard Lanham’s Paramedic Method provides a step-by-step procedure: find the action buried in a nominalization, turn it into a verb, find the agent, make it the subject, cut the rest [@lanham2006]. Joseph Williams systematized similar principles around characters, actions, cohesion, and coherence [@williams2006].
Related terms
- audience — revision often means transforming writer-based prose into reader-based prose
- readability — revision can improve readability, but readability metrics measure surface features, not structural quality
- Paramedic Method — Lanham’s step-by-step revision procedure for sentence-level clarity
- first-order and second-order thinking — Elbow’s framework for separating generation from evaluation
- think-aloud protocol — the research method that revealed revision as recursive