The flow and feel of a piece of writing can make a difference in terms of how it’s received by readers. While revising and finalizing, consider the readers and how you want them to feel or think about the writing.

This is the stage of the writing process for rearranging things and taking time to really polish the work. One thing that can make this stage much easier is to simply read the article out loud. Actually hearing the words, as written, can help you determine whether or not it flows well, makes sense, and the content is in a logical order. If things don’t sound right, use ARMS to make changes.

Revising in an organized fashion

Much like the easy editing process, there’s a simple way to revise as well. For revising, one of the often used acronyms is ARMS. This stands for add, remove, move, and substitute. The revision process can be quite simple. While revising, keep the topic and reasons for writing the piece in mind.

A – Add

Read through your article or post and look for additions you can make. Is there a little more information you could give that would make it easier for readers to understand? Check to make sure all links have been added where necessary. Giving others credit for their work is certainly a requirement.

R – Remove

Sometimes when writing, it’s easy to just let it flow. However, this can lead to sentences or even entire paragraphs/sections that don’t really fit with the topic. If anything that just doesn’t belong is found, remove it.

M – Move

While drafting an article, it’s easy to end up with things that aren’t necessarily in the “right” order. Depending on how you’ve laid out your article, moving things around can make a big difference for the overall flow of it. Reading your piece out loud to yourself (not just in your head) can help pinpoint pieces that may make more sense if moved to another spot. Rearranging a piece of writing can even have an effect overall understandability.

S – Substitute

This is another piece of revising and finalizing that can be easier to do by reading the article out loud. If part of it feels off or doesn’t sound right, substitute some of the words for synonyms and see if it sounds better.

Sometimes entire sentences need to be substituted for others. It’s totally fine to scratch one sentence completely and replace it. Keep the end goal in mind. Upon completion of the editing and revision process, the piece should be understandable, well written, and a good read.

Time to Finalize

Revising and finalizing go hand in hand. Once revising is complete, it’s time to read through the piece one more time and make any final changes. Keep in mind, the work is about done. All main content is there. So any changes made at this finalization stage should really be to enhance the writing. If there’s one thing that can be added to make the introduction more catchy, that’s great!

This is not the time to add a ton more content on a whole new topic that doesn’t really flow with the current information. If other ideas are sparked at this point, saving them for another article is probably the way to go.

Time to Finalize

Revising and finalizing go hand in hand. Once revising is complete, it’s time to read through the piece one more time and make any final changes. Keep in mind, the work is about done. All main content is there. So any changes made at this finalization stage should really be to enhance the writing. If there’s one thing that can be added to make the introduction more catchy, that’s great!

This is not the time to add a ton more content on a whole new topic that doesn’t really flow with the current information. If other ideas are sparked at this point, saving them for another article is probably the way to go.

While revising and finalizing can take time, don’t let it take too much time. There’s no need to rearrange 500 times. Substituting some words for others is great, but trying to swap every word for a different one is necessary.

The Benefits of revising & Finalizing

The benefits of taking the time to really go through the writing process are many. Awesome and engaging writing keeps the audience captivated and interested. People who enjoy reading your article or post are likely to come back to your site when they see something new.

Happy Finalizing!

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