Revising for clarity and development on the Grade 10 ELA MCAS: improving a draft at the level of ideas, focus, and organization (adding a missing detail or transition, removing an off-topic sentence, sharpening a vague statement, reordering for logic), distinguishing revising from editing, as tested in revising items and applied to the long composition.

What this skill is asking

Revising is improving a draft at the level of ideas, focus, and organization, and the Grade 10 ELA MCAS tests it with items that present a draft and ask you to make it clearer or better developed. Revising is distinct from editing, which fixes grammar, usage, and mechanics: revising changes what the writing says and how it is arranged, while editing corrects how it is written. Typical revising moves are adding a missing detail or transition, removing an off-topic sentence, sharpening a vague statement, and reordering for logic. The skill students lose ground on is treating every draft problem as a grammar fix, or "improving" a sentence in a way that breaks the focus. This page covers the main revising moves and the line between revising and editing. The transferable skill is reading your own and others' drafts for clarity and development, which is exactly what lifts the Idea Development trait on the long composition.

Revising versus editing

The first move is to know what kind of improvement an item wants.

Telling the two apart prevents the most common error: answering a revising item with an editing fix (or the reverse). If a draft has a missing link between ideas, capitalizing a word or adding a comma does not fix it; a transition does. If a draft has an off-topic sentence, the issue is focus, and the fix is to delete it, not to repunctuate it. Reading the item's stem, "which change best improves the clarity," "which sentence should be removed," tells you it wants a revising move, and you choose accordingly.

The main revising moves

These moves all answer one question: does this change make the writing clearer or better developed? Adding a transition or a needed detail develops and connects; deleting an off-topic sentence restores focus; sharpening a vague phrase improves clarity; reordering improves logic. A wrong answer on a revising item usually either fixes the wrong kind of problem (an editing fix for a content problem) or makes a change that harms focus (adding more off-topic material). Keeping the goal, clarity and development, in front of you is what makes the right choice obvious, and it is the same goal that earns Idea Development on the essay.

Working a revising item

Try this

Q1. What is the difference between revising and editing? [Recall]

• Cue. Revising improves the ideas, focus, development, and organization of a draft (adding, deleting, sharpening, reordering); editing fixes the grammar, usage, punctuation, and spelling without changing the ideas.

Q2. A draft paragraph about saving water ends with a sentence about a favorite TV show. What revising move is needed, and why? [Short explanation]

• Cue. Delete the off-topic sentence. It has nothing to do with saving water, so it breaks the paragraph's focus. Revising for focus means removing material that does not serve the point, which keeps the paragraph clear and on task.