Triage Editing for College Papers

            I thought college wouldn't be too difficult because I had done so well in college prep courses. By the time I had completed my first week, I was starting to get a different picture. I'm sure many of you are very familiar with the panic of looming deadlines and mounting work. It takes a good deal of organization and time management to survive college. Even the best planners can sometimes get caught off guard. I remember several research papers that went largely ignored because of more immediate deadlines. Finally, I had to rush to complete all the work within a few days.

When you’re under pressure and short on time, mistakes are more likely to creep into your writing. It can be easy to forego editing for the sake of extra hours and making deadlines. Doing so can be a mistake because it exposes you to potentially losing points on your paper. It is possible to give quality work in a short timeframe with the help of triage editing.

            The idea behind triage editing is to get enough editing done to ensure that no big problems linger without taking up as much time. For a student, triage editing can be a time and grade saver. While it is important to plan out time for fully editing your work, triage editing makes it possible to turn in better quality papers in a time crunch. Triage editing is especially popular amongst journalists who often need to get stories published the same day. There are four major areas that you should focus on when triage editing a research paper. Each area will help you catch the most noticeable mistakes that might be lurking in your writing.

            Honestly, the best way to view triage editing is as damage control. The first step then is to assess the damage. Use both computer tools and your eyes to estimate how much editing your paper is going to need. Running a grammar and spelling checker can give you an initial idea followed by skimming the writing. As you skim for errors, listen to the flow of your words to make sure that the paper reads smoothly and clearly. Correct all mistakes as you see them. Then, you won't have to go back or risk being unable to find them again. However, don't just accept all the corrections the checkers want to make. Review each correction to ensure it is what you want and follows grammar rules.

            Once you've corrected grammar, spelling, and anything else that jumps out at you, it is best to move on to the big parts of your work. Always allot time to properly edit titles and headings. Take it from someone with experience. It is going to look bad to your professor if you manage to misspell your name on the title page of your paper. Check every heading for grammar usage, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Once you completely edit your research paper, I suggest you go back and check the headings one more time. By then, enough moments have passed that mistakes are more likely to stand out if you missed any the first time.

            The next place you should move your focus to is the extras. Extras include pictures, graphs, tables, charts, and indexes. If you have any of these in your paper, take the time to check them both for grammar and accuracy. These extras are supposed to add to your text. Any mistakes in them are not only going to defeat the purpose of their existence but possibly detract from your paper. Look at the labels, captions, page numbers, and data to ensure that everything is as it should be. If you reference any of your pictures or tables in your text, do a quick check to make sure that each reference guides the reader to the right spot.

            Finally, move on to your footnotes, endnotes, and citations. Every college student ought to know how critical reference citations can be. Colleges make sure that everyone is well-versed in what constitutes plagiarism and what the consequences will be. To avoid this troubling turn of events, devote some of your editing time to making sure that each reference is accurate, includes the necessary information, and directs readers to the correct location. Your sources are the backbone of your paper because you use them to back up your arguments. If citations are not correct, it not only creates plagiarism problems but also weakens your arguments.

           With that and a final skim to make sure all looks well; you should have a triage-edited and turn-in ready paper. It may not be as detailed as average editing, but it gets the job done. By focusing on the most important aspects of a paper and correcting the most costly mistakes, you can turn in a good quality paper despite a short deadline.