Part III

How to Revise and Edit
Your Work

16 How to Attack Manuscripts Like an Editor or Reviewer

There is a striking difference between scholarly publishing and most other social activities: rejection is the rule in scholarly publication, not the exception. The best journals__the ones scholars must publish in for tenure and promotion at research universities__often boast rejection rates of 95 percent. If a journal isn’t tough to get into, then it may be discounted by a faculty member’s department. In contrast, if someone truly dislikes you in your department, it would be highly unlikely for him or her to turn to you at a faculty meeting and say, “Sorry, your idea is not important. If you think of something worthwhile in the future, we would be glad to consider it.”In any case, even the rudest of colleagues could not get away with this dismissive behavior 95 percent of the time!
Nevertheless, it is very commonplace for critics to attack manuscripts with the tenacity of a bulldog with rabies. When it comes to evaluating your own writing or implementing the harsh criticisms of review readers, you need to have especially thick skin. Naturally, you do not necessarily need to accept every criticism, bllt you should consider all of them seriously no matter how quirky they at first appear to be. Rather than getting depressed that your manuscript did not render your readers speechless over your rhetorical abilities, you may want to take cheer in the finding that revision is crucial to most writers. Even professional writers routinely need to revise their manuscripts to account for the insights of critics.
Academic writing is distinguished from most other kinds of writing in the degree of revision expected. While you can knock off a quick memo in a single draft, most academic essays require multiple revisions, some as many as a dozen or even four dozen. While tangled syntax and awkward wording may be acceptable in brief notes to colleagues, the rigorous peer_review process is designed to ensure that scholarly documents are exemplary. The high cost of scholarly publishing and the publisher’s desire to attract highly educated readers require that only the best manuscripts be published. As guardians of the word, members of the professoriate are expected to write elegantly, to offer original contributions, and to help their disciplines evolve.
Rather than considering revision to be a relatively unimportant activity, like minor housekeeping, you can have a more accurate sense of how professional writers perceive revision if you consider it more similar to major renovation in which you tear down walls, rip off the roof, and add turrets. While you may be particularly adept at identifying and correcting grammatical and mechanical problems, you should ignore these concerns when you first begin revising. The problem with investing time in copy_editing rough drafts is that the ideas expressed in the drafts may be unoriginal or inappropriate for your audience. After investing time in making the prosaic seem elegant, you may have difficulty discarding the draft altogether. At the very least, you have lost valuable time.
In this chapter, I provide an overview of the questions that most editors and review readers use to critique manuscripts. Of course. reading is not a simple process in which all academicians ask the same questions and come up with the same answers. Different texts and occasions warrant emphasis on different questions. Yet academicians do share a number of conventions, and you should be aware that most editors and reviewers will consider these questions when critiquing your manuscripts.
Instead of considering all of these questions when critiquing your own or a colleague’s manuscript, you may find it more useful to focus on one question or set of questions at a time. For instance, you may want to read through your manuscript once to ensure that you have conformed to the required documentation style. Second, don’t get angry with yourself if you keep finding problems in even the tenth read_through. Instead, recognize that this is the process, that finding gaps in your thinking or having a sudden burst of inspiration that shatters your preconceptions is what makes the writing worth doing. Third, allow for as much incubation time as possible. We all need some distance from our ideas and drafts before we gain the perspective necessary to critique and develop them. Fourth, read your work out loud. In a surprisingly powerful way, this highlights problems with voice, content development, and grammar. Because of this, many writers mumble to themselves while they compose, and almost all successful writers read their final draft aloud to ensure that it is as effective as possible. Try it. You’ll be surprised by its usefulness. Finally, to second_guess the editors and reviewers, you may wish to share drafts of your manuscripts with colleagues, asking them to evaluate them with a few of these questions in mind.

1. Is the subject truly significant and worthwhile?
? What original contributions am I making to the literature?
? Have I clarified for the reader what is significant about my results or ideas?

2. Have I thoroughly accounted for the intended audience?
? Has my opinion about my audience changed as a result of writing?
? Have I thoroughly accounted for what the readers need to know? What terms or concepts need clarification?
? Are my examples and illustrations effective? Should I provide more examples to help readers Visualize conceptual problems? Have I used concepts that my readers will not understand?
? Have I introduced inforrnation that may make the audience angry? Can I eliminate these hot passages and still get my point across?
3. Have I established the tone most appropriate for the audience and purpose?
? Have I established the voice that I set out to present? Are there any sections in which I appear confused, pedantic, or angry?
? Now that I have thought more deeply about the subject, how have my thoughts changed about the particular voice that I should try to establish?
4. How have my thoughts on the subject developed as a result of writing?
? As I look over the whole, the paragraphs, the sentences, and the words, can I find ideas that have emerged through writing?
? Did I finish with the same purpose that I began with? What changes to my introduction need to be made to account for what I have actually done?
5. Are there any gaps in content development and reasoning?
? Do I need to provide additional reasoning or outside documentation to support controversial statements?
? Have I provided enough background information for readers to understand the discussion and evaluation?
? Have I addressed all of the important counterarguments the reader is likely to consider? Have I cited the a apppropriate studies and relied on up_todate information?
? If I am writing a research report, is there a clear connection between the problem and the methods, the results, and the conclusions? Have I exaggerated my position or results?
6. Is the rationale well developed?
? Will the audience be likely to be skeptical about the methods I have followed? Have I provided the references needed to support the method?
? Have I provided the details about the materials and methods employed needed to replicate the study?
? Have I talked too much about the methods employed and too little about the results? Are readers likely to think I am hiding something?
7. Is the document organized effectively?
? What is the overall organizing principle of the document? Am I organizing by topic and priority, by chronological order, by cause and effect? Have I organized my material deductively or inductively? Am I working from a problem to a solution or from a cause to an effect? Will another arrangement of the material be more effective?
? Throughout the text, have I moved from what the reader knows the given__to what the reader doesn’t know__the new?
? Have I provided the forecasting and transitional sentences that readers will need to understand how the different ideas relate to each other?
? Is my manuscript unified and energized by a compelling purpose, or does it seem to wander from subject to subject?
? When describing what something is, have I effectively ranked the issues in their order of importance?
? When explaining how something occurred, have I divided the issue or process into major steps?
? When explaining why, have I thoroughly explored all possible causes and effects?
Have I confused coincidental relationships for causal ones?
8. Have I established a professional style?
? Can I cut the length of the document in half? Have I really tried to edit for economy?
? Are any of the examples and illustrations unnecessary given the audience’s level of knowledge? Are any examples and illustrations redundant?
9. Have I followed the conventions for documenting sources?
Have I acknowledged indebtedness to all of the scholars whose original ideas I used when developing the document?
? Is it clear when I am using outside sources? Are quotation marks placed around short quotations, and are longer quotations placed in block quote format?
? Have I established the credibility of the sources? For example, when reviewing other scholars’ research findings, have I clarified their methods so that my readers can better judge their reliability?
? Have I accurately paraphrased relevant sources?
? Am I using too many secondary references? Can I make my document stronger by paraphrasing some of the direct quotes? Has my research material overcome my voice and purpose?
? Will I need to obtain permission to cite any sources? Have I followed “fair use” guidelines? (See Chapter 15 for a discussion of copyright laws.)
10. Are the paragraphs coherent and cohesive?

? Are paragraphs in the most effective order in the text?
? Should the existing paragraphs be cut into smaller segments or merged into longer ones?
? Should a later paragraph__say the third paragraph be combined with an introductory paragraph?
? Will readers understand the logical connections between paragraphs? Are additional sentences needed to clarify the logical relationship between ideas?
? Have I been too blatant about transitions? Are all of the transitional sentences and paragraphs really necessary, or can the reader follow my thoughts without them?
11. Is the document formatted effectively?
? Can I use a picture, a graph, or a table to represent my meaning visually?
? Are all of the visuals necessary? Am I offering simpleto_understand concepts or repeating information that is already presented concisely in the text?
? Would my material be more readable if I boldfaced major and minor subheadings?
? Have I followed the requirements of the journal or book publisher to which I will submit the work?
? What changes in the format of my document will make my prose more readable? Should I use fewer or more subheadings? Can I use bullets, subheadings, or lists to emphasize key points?

FINAL COMMENTS
Once you have addressed the substantive issues posed by these questions~ you are ready to attack your sentences like a copy editor. Te nex chapter covers readability guidelines for ensuring that entences are precise, emphatic, and concise. Before tearing ument apart at the sentence level, however, you might want to take a moment to admire it. Although I might sound facetious here, I am truly quite serious: you should balance criticism with praise, and remember that all documents__even those written by world_renowned scholars__have faults. Writing well can be a difficult activity, so you need to reward yourself from time to time.