What is the Difference Between Revision and Editing?

The difference between revision and editing lies in their focus and the stages of the writing process they involve. Here is a breakdown of the differences:

Revision:

• Focuses on the content, structure, and organization of the text.
• Makes major changes to the document, such as modifying the controlling ideas, adding new information, moving around paragraphs, or removing unnecessary information.
• Deals with the paper as a whole, considering strengths and weaknesses, arguments, focus, organization, support, and voice, as well as mechanical issues.
• Typically occurs before editing.
• Involves rewriting entire sections of the paper for the purpose of improving the content.

Editing:

• Focuses on sentence-level changes, such as sentence structure and phrasing.
• Makes local changes, like correcting spelling, grammar, punctuation, or word choice.
• Rearranges words in sentences, substitutes less precise or effective words with more precise and effective ones, and deletes unnecessary words.
• Occurs after the major content and structural changes have been made.
• Focuses primarily on sentence-level issues like sentence variety and word choice.

In summary, revision deals with the overall content, structure, and organization of a text, while editing involves making more local changes to improve sentence structure, phrasing, and other language elements. Revision typically comes before editing in the writing process.

Comparative Table: Revision vs Editing

Here is a table that highlights the differences between revision and editing:

In summary, revising focuses on the content, organization, and overall structure of the writing, while editing concentra