Chapter 14 reading

Chapter 14 talks about drafting and revising your drafts. Once I realized what the chapter was about I thought to myself I really have trouble with my drafts as far as revising myself. Then I read the first section of the chapter and it talked just about that. Normally when I revise my draft the first thing I am looking for are grammatical errors. Although that is extremely important I now realize that the spelling is just a small part of reading your draft. One important point the book makes that I need to focus on is reading it from the readers perspective and if it is usable and easy to understand. Ways to do this are to read the paper aloud. In doing this words or sentences that you trip up on are where you should pay attention. If it is hard for you to say it most likely will be harder for the reader to understand. Another good practice is to as the book refers "let time pass." Meaning that give yourself time so that when you pick up and read you may notice errors you wouldn't have before. I normally always use spell checker but it doesn't always catch everything. Once thing I didn't know about is that you can look to see how much of your language is passive. That was cool, I will have to check it out next time I write a paper.

Once you have your draft, you revise it, then someone else revises it then you prioritize what are the most important changes to make. Knowing who your stakeholders are and how they would think are important to know. For me, the most interesting part about this chapter was the beginning talking about how to revise your own draft and how to be effective in doing it.