How to Edit a College Essay: What Most Students Miss

Short answer: Read it out loud.

Longer answer: Most students edit by reading silently, which means their brain autocorrects what’s on the page into what they meant to write. You miss things that way.

Read it out loud. Every word. If you stumble, the sentence needs work. If you have to take a breath in the middle, it’s too long. If you’d never say it that way in conversation, cut it or rewrite it.

The other thing most students miss: they edit for grammar when they should be editing for voice. A technically correct essay that sounds like a robot is a worse problem than a comma splice that sounds like a human.