Revising and Editing Your Text

Revising and Editing Your Text#

Once you’ve drafted your text, and maybe also received some feedback on your draft from your supervisor, lecturer or peer(s), it’s time to improve your draft by revising and editing the text. Revising refers to bigger changes, for example explaining concepts better or differently, or adding an extra argument to your text. Editing refers to smaller changes, like fixing grammar and spelling errors.

Standard Practice

Revising and Editing Your Text
Improve your text based on feedback you received and your own critical evaluation of your text

AI Assist 1

Asking AI for Feedback
Ask general AI tools for feedback on your draft text

AI Assist 2

Revising Your Text with AI as Sparring Partner
Ask general AI tools for suggestions on how to implement feedback you received

AI Assist 3

Editing Your Text with AI
Use general AI tools to improve spelling, grammar, punctuation and writing style

Recap Standard Practice: Revising and Editing Your Text#

When you have to revise and edit your text, you usually start with the higher order concerns (revising): improving the content, the argumentation and the overall structure/storyline of the text. These improvements are often based on the feedback you received, but also on your own critical evaluation of your text. A technique that can be helpful during the self-evaluation of your text is reversed outlining: for each paragraph, determine what the point is that you’re trying to convey and check if the paragraph actually conveys that point in an effective manner.

When the problems with higher order concerns are solved, it is time to edit your text and take care of the lower order concerns: writing style, spelling, grammar and punctuation. You can do this based on feedback you received or on your own evaluation, and you can use tools, such as spelling/grammar check in Word or Overleaf, or Grammarly.

AI Assist 1: Asking AI for Feedback#

In most cases, you will receive feedback on your draft from your supervisor, lecturer or peer(s), but it could be the case that you won’t. In that case (or if you’re just curious what it has to say), you can also use an AI tool for feedback. General AI tools work well for feedback on aspects that don’t have much to do with the content of your text, like the structure or writing style. For feedback on the content or argumentation, general AI tools are not as suitable.

Example Prompt

You are a scientific editor. Below is a draft section from my literature review paper about [topic]. Provide feedback on the structure and writing style of the text. Present the feedback in a bulleted list. For each feedback point, explain what is wrong with my text and give me concrete suggestions on how to improve.
[your draft section]

In addition to general AI tools, there are also academic writing feedback tools that have been developed recently, like Winston.ai. Note that these tools are often paid and that it is currently unclear if the quality of the feedback is up to academic standards (i.e., if it is better than general tools).

Guided Activity: Ask AI for Feedback

Step 1. Choose a general AI-tools, for example Copilot, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Claude.

Step 2. Select a section from your paper that you would like to receive feedback about.

Step 3. Ask the AI for feedback. You can use the following prompt (and adjust it where necessary):

You are a scientific editor. Below is a draft section from my literature review paper about [topic]. Provide feedback on the structure and writing style of the text. Present the feedback in a bulleted list. For each feedback point, explain what is wrong with my text and give me concrete suggestions on how to improve.
[your draft section]

Step 4. Evaluate the output: is the feedback useful, and if so, how can you implement it?

AI Assist 2: Revising Your Text with AI as Sparring Partner#

In a way, this AI Assist is similar to AI Assist 2 from the previous section, but this one is broader: it can be about any feedback you received. That makes this strategy also more targeted: instead of asking suggestions for just any section, you ask the AI for suggestions to improve a specific section or paragraph, based on specific feedback you received. Note that this AI Assist is most useful for feedback on higher order concerns. For feedback regarding lower order concerns, you can use AI Assist 2 below (or just fix the errors yourself). Although it can be very useful to ask AI for suggestions on how to implement feedback, don’t forget that you are in charge. Don’t blindly follow the AI’s suggestions, but always critically evaluate them.

Example Prompt

You are a scientific editor. Below is a draft section from my literature review paper about [topic]. I received the following feedback about this section: [feedback]. Give a bulleted list of 5 suggestions how I can implement this feedback in my text.
[draft section]

Once the AI has provided a few suggestions, you can build on one or more of them with a follow-up prompt.

Example Follow-up Prompt

I think the suggestion about [suggestion] would be the most suitable for my text. Can you rewrite the section based on this suggestion for improvement? Underneath the rewritten section, give a detailed list in bullet points explaining the changes that you made.

Guided Activity: Use GenAI to Revise Your Text

Step 1. Choose a general AI-tools, for example Copilot, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Claude.

Step 2. Select a section from your paper that you received some feedback about.

Step 3. Ask the AI for suggestions to implement the feedback. You can use the following prompt (and adjust it where necessary):

You are a scientific editor. Below is a draft section from my literature review paper about [topic]. I received the following feedback about this section: [feedback]. Give a bulleted list of 5 suggestions how I can implement this feedback in my text.
[draft section]

Step 4. Evaluate the suggestions and select the suggestions that seem most helpful.

Step 5. Ask the AI to elaborate on the suggestions that you selected. You can use the following prompt (and adjust it where necessary):

I think the suggestion about [suggestion] would be the most suitable for my text. Can you rewrite the section based on this suggestion for improvement? Underneath the rewritten section, give a detailed list in bullet points explaining the changes that you made.

Step 6. Evaluate the output and improve your text accordingly.

AI Assist 3: Editing Your Text with AI#

If there is just one thing that general AI tools are good at, it’s correct language use. As explained, AI tools use large language models to generate language. As such, they are very well “aware” of what correct language is. Therefore, you could very well use general AI tools, such as Copilot, ChatGPT or Gemini, to help you edit your text and correct spelling, grammar and punctuation errors as well as improve the writing style.

Example Prompt

You are a scientific editor. Below is a draft paragraph from my literature review paper about [topic]. Rewrite the paragraph to improve the structure of the paragraph: make sure it starts with a clear topic sentence and that the rest of the paragraph elaborates on the topic sentence, with a good flow. Also correct any spelling, grammar and punctuation errors in the paragraph. The tone of the paragraph should be formal and suitable for an academic journal. Underneath the improved paragraph, explain the changes you made in bullet points so I can learn how to improve my writing.
[your draft paragraph]

Guided Activity: Use GenAI to Edit Your Text

Step 1. Choose a general AI-tools, for example Copilot, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Claude.

Step 2. Select a paragraph from your paper that contains spelling/grammar errors or could be improved otherwise.

Step 3. Ask the AI for suggestions to implement the feedback. You can use the following prompt (and adjust it where necessary):

You are a scientific editor. Below is a draft paragraph from my literature review paper about [topic]. Rewrite the paragraph to improve the structure of the paragraph: make sure it starts with a clear topic sentence and that the rest of the paragraph elaborates on the topic sentence, with a good flow. Also correct any spelling, grammar and punctuation errors in the paragraph. The tone of the paragraph should be formal and suitable for an academic journal. Underneath the improved paragraph, explain the changes you made in bullet points so I can learn how to improve my writing.
[your draft paragraph]

Step 4. Evaluate the output and improve your text accordingly.

Summary and Prompts#

Task

Standard Practice

AI Assist

Tools

Example Prompts

Revising and editing your text

Improve your text (both higher and lower order concerns) based on feedback you received or your own critical evaluation

Ask AI for feedback on your text

General tools, e.g. Copilot, ChatGPT

You are a scientific editor. Below is a draft section from my literature review paper about [topic]. Provide feedback on the structure and writing style of the text. Present the feedback in a bulleted list. For each feedback point, explain what is wrong with my text and give me concrete suggestions on how to improve.

Revise your text with AI as sparring partner

General tools, e.g. Copilot, ChatGPT

You are a scientific editor. Below is a draft section from my literature review paper about [topic]. I received the following feedback about this section: [feedback]. Give a bulleted list of 5 suggestions how I can implement this feedback in my text.

Edit your text with AI

General tools, e.g. Copilot, ChatGPT

You are a scientific editor. Below is a draft paragraph from my literature review paper about [topic]. Rewrite the paragraph to improve the structure of the paragraph: make sure it starts with a clear topic sentence and that the rest of the paragraph elaborates on the topic sentence, with a good flow. Also correct any spelling, grammar and punctuation errors in the paragraph. The tone of the paragraph should be formal and suitable for an academic journal. Underneath the improved paragraph, explain the changes you made in bullet points so I can learn how to improve my writing.

References#

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