I hear this from my students aallll the tiiiime. I'm trying to instill the idea that a deadline for a paper does not mean, "This is how long I have to hand this stupid thing in." Instead, it should mean, "This is the date the teacher is going to tear my baby out of my hands."

That being said, I feel as though the editing process for writing is only done when someone takes that piece of writing away from you.

(Note: It is highly likely I have edited these comments 1004 times since the time I first posted them.)

Here are some of my favorite techniques for improving my writing.

Spellcheck isn't enough.

I had a student turn in a paper that read:

"He was the best collage coach I ever saw."

Now, spellcheck wouldn't catch the fact that he wrote "collage" and meant to write "college." That error can only be caught with human eyes and a human brain. You must proofread. Spellcheck makes it easier, but spellcheck isn't an autopilot that can land your plane.

BTW- I must admit that the "collage" coach error gave me one of my biggest belly laughs ever. I imagined some stone-faced coach in a wrestler's unitard standing over a kid with paste and cut up magazines screaming, "CENTER THAT! ALIGN THOSE EDGES, MAGGOT!" So I am thankful, at times, that you folks rely solely on spellcheck.

Nobody should make the silly error of accidentally writing, "I enjoy going to they're house over their, but only when there home." What to do?

I love the find/replace feature on my word processing programs. Try this:

Type "there" into your your find/replace window. Go through your paper and scrutinize each usage of that word. Change as necessary.

Rinse and repeat by inputting "they're" and "there" into the window.

Sounds painstaking, but it's actually pretty easy.

Another pet peeve of mine? The abuse of your and you're. I'm sure you all know the rules, but when we get typing quickly, we miss little errors like that. And so does spell-check.

So use the same find/replace feature and track down these little rascals.

These are great proofreading tactics to use when you're feeling a little brain dead. It's easy!

It's and its. Type fast and you can accidentally sub one for the other.

Find, scrutinize, and replace as necessary.

You can use the same technique for more than spelling errors.

Punctuation comes inside quotation marks. (Only exceptions: the colon and the semicolon... which are advanced maneuvers anyway.)

Did you know that you can use find/replace with punctuation marks, too?

Try searching for:
",

And replace with:
,"

Do the same thing with periods, question marks, exclamation marks.

Does your character really just "begin to" wonder where her brother is? (Why does she stop?) "Begin to" is an example of what I call stutter steps. Make your writing sleeker by eliminating these words.

Jan began to wonder where her brother had gone.

becomes

Jan wondered where her brother had gone.

Similar stutter step words: begin to, began to, seemed to, started to....

When using find/replace, be sure to look for these words in the proper verb tenses for your writing.

No need to tell your reader, "I believe the death penalty is wrong." Obviously you believe it... you're the one writing an essay about it. Look what happens when you eliminate such bloat from your writing:

I believe the death penalty is wrong.

becomes

The death penalty is wrong.

The second example is stronger, more startling. Much more interesting!

Use find an replace to seek out and destroy such useless verbiage!

Ugh. I hate these words:
thing, stuff, interesting, good, bad, pretty, very, really...

Each and every one of those words is so vague and so nutrition-free that it just takes up space in your writing without providing your reader with a clear vision of what you're trying to describe.

People believe lots of things.

Uh. Right. So what.

People believe in a variety of religious deities.

Ah. Ok.

This is an interesting book.

Blah.

This book criticizes Christianity.

Ok. Now I'm mad. Or intrigued. Or both.

Find and replace.

I over-that my writing like crazy. Not all "that"s are bad. But most can be eliminated.

For instance:

She said that she would go with me to the party.

becomes

She said she would go with me to the party.

Conversely:

Put that over there.

cannot become

Put over there.

Find, scrutinize, and replace as necessary.