Many people use the words revising, editing, and polishing interchangeably when describing the writing process, but they’re distinctly different tasks. For our purposes, we’ll think of revising as the process of changing and improving content, organization, and coherence.
While you can clean up mechanics, spelling, typos, and formatting as you encounter them, these tasks can largely be left for later. Since the content and message are paramount to any writing project, it makes sense to revise before polishing.
When revising, you’ll be moving ideas around, adding new information, deleting portions, and changing how you’ve worded different sections. You won’t need a lot of different digital tools, but the ones that you do use will be invaluable and used repeatedly.
Main Revision Tools
Cut, Copy, and Paste
Cut, copy, and paste tools are not new or necessarily glamorous, but they are mainstays in the revision process. Removing, adding, and shifting ideas around is nearly effortless with these tools, and it’s this ease of use that allows you to quickly try out different phrasing options or experiment with a different sequence of ideas.
Although you can use the dedicated toolbar buttons for these functions, keyboard shortcuts can make this process even faster and easier. You’ll use the Control key for these on a PC or Chromebook, while on a Mac, it will be the Command key:
- Control/Command + C = Copy
- Control/Command + X = Cut
- Control/Command + V = Paste
You can also highlight, click and hold, and then drag and drop selected text to move it as well.
Undo and Redo
Undo and redo are another set of very common but powerful tools—and probably a pair of favorites for most writers. Simply click the back undo arrow to reverse your latest keystrokes. If you decide that you liked your revision better, click the forward redo arrow. It’s simple and powerful.
Version History
Version history lets you review and recover ideas from previous drafts. If you’re collaborating with others, version history often lets you see who made which edits. Google Docs lets you name each version, and you can find this feature under the File menu. Microsoft Word 365 has a revision history under File > Info, which allows you to open a previous version in another window.
Track Changes
This feature is especially useful if you’re having someone else give you feedback. Any changes that they make are tracked and recorded. You can accept their suggestions or undo them if you like your original idea better.
Microsoft Word offers this feature under the Review tab, while in Google Docs, you’ll need to use either the version history or share the document in Suggesting mode.
Suggesting Mode
In this mode, changes appear as suggestions in the margin. This is another great feature for facilitating peer revision. The writer can again choose to accept or decline these suggestions.
As illustrated in this image, word processing programs offer key revision tools, such as comments, cut/copy/paste, and drag-and-drop relocation of content.
Peer and Collaborative Feedback Tools
When writing, it can be easy to get tunnel vision and not see beyond our initial ideas. We might miss our blind spots or simply lack the content knowledge needed to make necessary changes and improvements to our writing. Therefore, it’s beneficial to get insights and feedback from others.
There are several digital tools and settings that can make collaborative efforts much more efficient and effective.
Share Settings
Both Microsoft 365 and Google Docs allow you to share your document with others. You can choose to allow others to either view or edit the document. Google Docs also offers Suggesting mode, where peer changes become suggestions that can be accepted or declined, as well as Comment mode, where editors can highlight text and add comments in the margin.
Even when a document is in Editing mode in Google Docs, editors can access shortcuts by hovering their cursor over the left edge of the digital page. That action reveals a pop-up menu with three options: Add Comment, Add Emoji Reaction, and Suggest Edits. These convenient shortcuts make the feedback process even more effortless.
It can be effective to brainstorm ways to use these tools with your students. Giving them ownership in that process increases the chances that they will actually use the ideas as they revise and provide feedback.
Peergrade is an online tool for purchase, which allows students to give and receive peer feedback on writing assignments. If you’re not able to purchase a premium option like this, you can take advantage of their free 30-day trial.
Students can upload their work anonymously and critique other students’ work, and the teacher can review the analytics in the teacher dashboard.
PDF Markup
If you want to emulate traditional pen-and-paper markup, you can utilize several PDF annotation tools. Both Google Docs and Microsoft Word documents can be saved or downloaded as PDF files, which can then be used with either Kami or DocHub. Both Kami and DocHub are “freemium” products that require a subscription for access to the premium features and to unlock document limits, but both also offer a robust free version.
If you have access to it, another option is Microsoft OneNote. With this virtual offering, notebooks can be shared, and you can insert your writing into them—as a PDF or by copying and pasting your text onto a notebook page—and mark them up.
Scaffolds and Supports
Not everyone is equally skilled at providing positive, constructive feedback. It can be challenging, as it’s a skill that must be learned and practiced. Therefore, during peer feedback, it’s helpful to provide scaffolds and frameworks that help guide your students through this process.
Checklists and Rubrics
Providing a checklist or rubric can aid students with providing higher-quality feedback. These supports allow students to identify specific criteria upon which the writing will be evaluated. These are also critical tools for targeted self-evaluation.
Editing Key
An editing key allows you to provide specific editing markups for students to use. Students would use digital highlighters to annotate the text. The following is a sample color-coded editing key:
- Yellow: This part is confusing or unclear to me.
- Green: This is fantastic!
- Blue: Should this be moved to another location?
- Pink: This idea needs to be supported with more detail.
- Purple: Should this portion be omitted?
Comments
The comments feature allows you to provide targeted, specific feedback. Even if you use a color-coding system, comments can provide additional context and clarity to those markups.
To facilitate this, you might choose to provide a digital document with a series of common questions, such as: “Does this fit better somewhere else?” or “Can you expand on this or add an example?” With this reference document at their side, students can copy and paste ideas from that document into the comments of their peer’s work. As students get more comfortable leaving comments, this scaffold could be removed.
Multimedia Feedback
Subtleties can often get lost when messages are only shared as text. To make feedback faster and to make that feedback more personal and understandable, consider having students share via video or audio recordings.
Screencasting programs like Loom (Tips) or Screencastify are simple to use and can be shared with a link. A big benefit of screencasting is that peer editors can show the paper, pointing out reference points on the document while they are offering suggestions and feedback. This makes the feedback clearer and more meaningful.
Audio feedback is also powerful. Google Chrome extensions like Talk&Comment (Tips) or Mote can help to streamline the audio sharing process. Once a recording is complete, students paste the share link into a comment field, and the media player then appears for quick and easy access as an audio note.
Leveraging Generative AI
Generative AI is another tool that students might use to enhance the revision process. AI has become a highly used tool and strategy with professional writers, and it will eventually be a skill that our students need to learn, so it can be prudent to give consideration to when AI might serve as a powerful option in supporting students’ writing development.
For this strategy, students can either upload a document or copy and paste their writing into a generative AI chatbot. Then, they must ask targeted questions about how that writing can be improved. This interaction should feel much like working with a peer editor.
The better that students understand exactly what constitutes quality writing, the better job that they’ll do writing prompts for the chatbot. Students might ask questions like: “What arguments am I overlooking?” or “What arguments need stronger support or better evidence?”
You can also have students ask the chatbot for help. This can be a very effective strategy. Essentially, students ask the chatbot, “What do you need to know to help me? What questions should I ask you about my writing to help in the revision process?”
ChatGPT responded with the following list of helpful and targeted questions when asked, “What questions should I ask ChatGPT to provide effective and meaningful revision feedback to my writing?”:
To get the most effective revision feedback, ask questions like:
Content and Clarity
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- Does my thesis/central idea come through clearly?
- Are my arguments or points fully developed?
- Where does the writing feel confusing or unclear?
Organization and Flow
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- Does the structure make sense?
- Are transitions smooth between paragraphs?
- Are there any sections that feel out of place?
Style and Tone
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- Does the tone fit the audience and purpose?
- Are there areas where word choice could be stronger or more precise?
- Do I vary my sentence structures enough?
Evidence and Support
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- Is my evidence strong and relevant?
- Are there any claims that need more support or explanation?
Specific Feedback
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- Can you suggest stronger topic sentences?
- Can you help tighten this paragraph or sentence?
- Where can I cut redundancy?
The more details your students provide to the chatbot, the better the results will generally be. For that reason, it can be helpful to begin the chat session by giving the AI several specific parameters and details, such as:
- A Role: Is the chatbot acting as a peer, an editor, or a teacher?
- The Context: What type of writing are you producing, for what purpose, and to what audience?
- A Specific Task: In terms of feedback, what are you specifically asking the chatbot to provide you with?
While these are the basics, you could go even further. For instance, a fully formed chatbot prompt might look like the following:
“You are an expert at providing writing feedback to high school students. You understand how to nudge students to improve their work without doing the revision for them. You point out areas that could be improved and offer probing questions for consideration. Do not rewrite the student’s work for them; instead, act as a peer editor providing expert feedback. This writing assignment is an argumentative essay with a strong focus on providing supporting evidence to back up the writer’s position. Provide feedback specifically about parts of the paper with areas of supporting evidence that could be strengthened. Here is the writing to review.” [Paste the student writing sample here.]
When students are just starting out using chatbots, you might decide to provide them with a fully written prompt like this for them to copy and paste into their own chatbot. As they become more experienced with the process, you can have them compose their own prompts using similar structures.
Another option is to set up a custom chatbot for your students using a tool like SchoolAI. Custom chatbots are a great way to retain some control over the chatbot experience while still allowing students to benefit from the interaction itself.
Overall, the revision process is a challenging mental exercise. During this stage of the process, writers are literally re-visioning their work. They’re attempting to look at it with fresh eyes in an objective way in order to rethink lines of reasoning, improve organization, and strengthen supporting information.
A digital workspace with relevant revision tools will not do the work for our students, but if used well, that workspace and those tools should make the work a lot easier and more efficient.
AVID Connections
This resource connects with the following components of the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework:
- Instruction
- Rigorous Academic Preparedness
- Student Agency
- Insist on Rigor
Extend Your Learning
- Revising Drafts (The Writing Center at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
- Step 4: Revise (Global Studies and Languages at Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
- Steps for Revising Your Paper (Purdue Online Writing Lab at Purdue University)