You’ve spent hours on your paper. You’ve checked spelling, punctuation, and grammar. You rearranged sentences to maximize readability and harness sentence flow. The next item on your list is to insert sensory detail to liven up your text. Wordscape The five senses are: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Landscape painters capture the colors, textures, and essence of a particular place. Gourmands combine color, texture, taste, and smell into a fine dining experience. In the same way, great writers use all five senses to create a wordscape. Okay, I just made that word up. My point is, in order to put your reader in the character’s shoes you must use…
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Revising for Sentence Flow
With no sentence flow, Dick and Jane are dull as tofu. But that’s how I learned to read. It’s a wonder I ever developed a passion for it. Most sentences are two to six words long. See Spot. Spot is Dick and Jane’s dog. There’s a limited word list—this is Dick Jane Spot run house— you get the idea. It begged to be read in robotic monotone, and who wants to listen to that? Repetition may help you learn to hit a baseball, but Dick-and-Jane-style repetition just makes you want to throw up! Structure Luckily, I was exposed to other great literature: A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, Grimm’s Fairy…
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SPaG
SPaG is writer shorthand for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. It is the most basic level of revision. Most word programs have built in spell and grammar checks. They may even alert you to punctuation errors such as not using a question mark where you need one. Spelling Let’s look at spelling first. You may think spellcheck is your friend. Beware! Unfortunately your computer cannot distinguish between rode and road; sink and synch; or weight and wait. It is your job to proofread for meaning. The English language has hundreds of homophones, words that sound alike but are spelled differently. If you’re unsure of proper spelling look it up! Some homophones…
