Tips To Avoid Revisions In Clinical Writing
Written By: Claudia Jeffrey
Despite the years you have been writing for years and the number of publications you may have, you need to present exceptional work devoid of errors and flow. Nobody likes revisions, especially in clinical writings. Often, you may not wish to go about it. However, editing, revising and proofreading your work don’t have to be hard or stressful.
Below are 16 key strategies to avoid revisions in your clinical writing at every stage of your career.
1. Understand It First
Before start writing, read and compile your topic first. Grasp your style and flow of your content. Don’t refuse to look for your mistakes. This will reduce the chances to miss the point of your work. Hence, write your content first then read it as a reader, then edit without mercy and then submit your work. Being a reader with a fresh eye makes you understand perspective well,
2. There’s a Difference between Editing and Proofreading
Editing is not just about searching for errors, typos and grammatical mistakes. It’s about strengthening your writing and sentence structures. Editing is followed by proofreading. Thus, it’s always ok to proofread your content while editing and to avoid a full revision afterwards.
3. Justify Yourself
Every word, question, and even wordy statement in your writing should have a reason for being there. If it doesn’t have any purpose, then simply remove it from your contents. The rule is simple; if it’s not adding value, it’s not worthy of being there. Make a trick work: take a piece of your content after writing and challenge yourself to eliminate 10% of it then go for another one. Just keep in mind it won’t change the meaning and concept of your content. This is just to make it clear, concise and practical.
4. Read Slowly and Out Loud
Check for readability and flow of your content. Go through it several times and assess the entire document. Isolate yourself with your content to evaluate it better. Read it slowly and loud, change modes and notice glossed over silent reading. By this, you will come across little errors and typos with this strategy and will be able to improve the cadence of your content.
5. Pay Close Attention to Formatting
Although formatting is different than editing, it has the same importance when presented professionally. Keep your style consistent and maintain common standards will help you to put your work in the best possible manner. You may have to check for fonts, indentations, line spacing and paragraphs along with graphs, tables and visual placement with proper referencing and sourcing.
6. Edit On-Screen and Track Changes
With digital tools, it is possible to edit on go with your writings and track changes as well. This will help you while working with a professional researcher. By this, you both can see changes made or suggested to learn and make your clinical writing more authentic, polished and better. The double approach is extremely powerful to make changes then approve them to avoid revisions.
7. Run Spelling and Grammar Checks First
Before editing and proofreading, run a spell check using Grammarly or any other reliable tool to eliminate at least 20% chances of revisions. These tools may don’t catch every error, but it will catch obvious punctuations, grammatical and tenses mistakes. It will also highlight tone and sentence structures that need polishing.
8. Ensure you’re Not Distracted
While writing, editing and proofreading, make sure you are not distracted. Close all windows; sign out social media and out your phone on silent and then start writing. Set up an environment to focus on your work and get nothing else in front of you. Hence, by eliminating distractions, you will be able to engage yourself better with the writing, editing and proofreading to avoid any further revisions to make it the best can be.
9. Use Specific Language
In clinical writing, there is no space for prolonged stories and irrelevant details. It is better to avoid genera phases and includes exact phrases what elaborate your point precisely. Intersperse details with a meaning where needed with the descriptions of a finding to help readers understand your concept rather than just info-dumping everything at once.
10. Do Away with Excessive Adverbs
Adverbs are essential to modify verbs. However, the excessive use of adverbs can make a sentence lengthy and boring. In clinical writing, there is enormous chance to elaborate complicated terminologies with sentences filled with excess words, and most of them are adverbs, this leads to multiple revisions to change sentence structures and make paragraphs concise. Thus avoiding overfilling will help you to avoid revisions again and again.
11. Pay Attention to Flow and Comfort
Long sentences and large paragraphs are difficult to read and make a reader frustrate and successive. Keep your paragraphs to maximum three sentences and a sentence to 15 words. This will prevent to lose your reader’s interest and will let you grip and engage a decent amount of readers.
12. Look for Supporting References and Resources
References and resources are the backbones of clinical writing. Your content should include relevant citations that you have found researching, and it will add credibility and authority to your research. Also, make sure you legitimate sources with the most recent and current information. Lastly, double-check them.
13. Know Your Common Mistakes
Every writer has their own set of personal, constant and natural mistakes. Mostly, clinical writers focus on concepts and findings, and they don’t bother for spellings, punctuations and grammatical errors. Although, it’s good to let your ideas flow and get things on the page, then proofread and edit them. However, noticing and correcting your errors while writing can make it your natural practice and saves you a lot of time in revisions.
14. Sleep on It
Don’t saturate yourself with writing, editing and proofreading in a day. You cannot do everything at once. It will let you lose objectivity. Hence, just get your mind relaxed and have a good night sleep and give a fresh look the next day to have a fresh outlook for editing. Thus, after finishing the whole work, sleep on your work and recheck one last time early morning to locate errors and submit a perfect piece of content.
15. Be Consistent in Your Changes
Primarily, be consistent with every formatting, sentence structures, voice, tone and even punctuations for the entire document. Consistency will make you a confined writer and prevent you from unnecessary revisions.
16. Proofread Your Content Slowly
A big mistake clinical writer’s make is that they rush to proofread to inclined to finish. Therefore, it is recommended to read slowly as seeing every word will assure no errors. Also, slow reading will improve your work and help you to access your style clearly.
Additionally, don’t be afraid to ask for help. The second pair of the eye is always better to get you a new perspective of your findings. Although self-editing is a fantastic thing but a second person can help you to polish your work to the best can it be.
Hence, get ready to roll up your sleeves and tackle your writing a second time with editing and proofreading to avoid revisions and getting your way to successful writing. Good luck!